


Everyone's Entangled

by CodeIndigo



Category: Sense8 (TV), The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-01-15 19:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18505480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CodeIndigo/pseuds/CodeIndigo
Summary: Harry: "Chicago is a crossroads. Sooner or later, anything that's big finds its way here. It figures, of course, that this case was something that was right under my nose this entire time, and I was too wrapped up in myself to even notice. This was a real eye-opener."Will: "Never believed in magic, myself. As a cop, it's one of those things you just discount entirely. But Harry is the real deal. And when our paths crossed with the Winter Knight, we quickly found out that sometimes, when you look someone in the eye? They can look right back. But, let me start from the beginning..."Harry: "Let me back up and take it from the top...""...it all started in an old, abandoned church..."





	1. Power Calls to Power

Hell's bells.

I'd seen some bad places in my time. My current home, the uncharted island of Demonreach, was one such place. But somehow you just don't see ruins nearly as awful as a ruined church. This one had been ruined for a long time, and not even the homeless or the addicts hung out here terribly often anymore. Except for myself, and Karrin Murphy-- formerly of the Chicago PD, now a freelancer like myself-- the ruined church was empty.

"Hell's bells," I repeated. Nothing else really came to mind.

"You getting anything..." Murphy started. "You know. Spooky?"

"It's a wrecked church, Murph," i said. "'Spooky' is the least of my worries here."

It was a valid question, but my answer was just as fair. Churches were places of sanctuary, where a lot of mortal belief came together. This was an old Catholic church, built shortly after the Fire, and then decommissioned in the early 90's, when budget concerns caused a lot of parishes to shut their doors. But that belief wasn't going to go away just because the priests had said that the land wasn't consecrated. Belief is a powerful force for us here, but in the Nevernever-- the realm of Faerie, a parallel-ish world to our own-- it was damn near omnipotent.

Betrayed belief-- like the faith poured into a house of God, only to watch the building rot and fester-- was a close second. Power like that attracted the wrong sort of crowd. And when it decided that this was a good place to mount an assault on the mortal world, that attracted the 'me' kind of crowd.

"Harry," Murphy said. "I'm serious here. This was a case that SI couldn't make a dent in even when I was in their good graces." She shivered in the February chill. "This had to be something big."

"So walk me through it," I said.

Murphy took a deep breath before continuing. "August, couple years back. There was a suicide here. Overdose."

"Sad," I acknowledged, "but not spooky."

"The beat cop sent to check it out started poking around, and then he suddenly disappears for a year and a half," she said. "He had a Federal warrant and everything during that time. Suspected terrorist link."

"Getting closer. What's this have to do with spooky?"

"The organization that took over the investigation," Murphy said. "BPO, or something. They said they were an ecological group. They suddenly disappeared, too. But they haven't been back."

"Okay...?"

"They vanished shortly after Chichen Itza," Murphy said.

Stars and stones. This just got spooky.

\---

It had been a little more than a year since my trip to Chichen Itza, the Mayan city of sacrifice that the Red Court of vampires had called their home. They didn't call it home anymore. There weren't any of them left to call it home. I had exterminated them, from their eldest god-complex patriarch down to the very newest full-fledged member of their brood. That had cost me a lot, both personally and professionally. That newest vampire had been the mother of my child, and a woman that I had once loved intensely. Susan Rodriguez would never see our daughter again. But I was damn sure I was going to be there for Maggie.

When the Red Court evaporated, there was a vacuum to be filled, both in the supernatural world and in the mere mortal realm. The Court operated thousands of shell companies to funnel assets around worldwide, and when they all died, that money was up for grabs. But more than that, operating on a global scale meant that there were projects that were left unfinished. Considering that for the Red Court, "human resources" was an entirely different shade of euphemism, that undoubtedly meant that a lot of innocent people had died during human trafficking transportation.

So, whatever this BPO was about, it was probably up to no good. Which meant that, sooner or later, it would come after me and mine. And that was not happening.

“What do we know about this BTO, or whatever?” I asked. “I mean, besides bland 70’s rock.”

“Biologic Preservation Organization,” Murphy corrected. “Multinational group based out of… used to be Cairo, but they moved to London a few years ago. They do a lot of genetic engineering research. Ever hear of GMOs?”

“I think I saw them opening for Aerosmith?” I guessed.

“No, dummy, genetically modified organisms. Like, Franken-food. Bananas the size of pumpkins, seedless pomegranates, that sort of thing.” Murphy frowned. “BPO is the second largest research lab for those on the planet.”

“What does the Belafonte Protection Office have to do with an overdose suicide in a run-down church in Chicago?” I asked. “If their thing is food…?”

“The closest lead I ever had was that they might have had something to do with the heroin that was used in the OD,” she replied, “but we dumped it to the back of the line when the case went cold.” She shivered. “What do you see in this place?”

Wizards have a few tricks up their sleeves. It's just the least likely place we keep them, but we have them. One of the first things most practitioners learn is how to use the Sight. Think of it like magical night-vision goggles, but instead of peeling away the dark of night it can let you see through illusions and other forms of concealment. While it sounds useful, anything that you See, you remember. With perfect clarity. Forever. Like it's carved into your brain with a Dremel. And there are some scary things out there that, if you See them, you will literally crap a brick. A few years back, I had the good fortune to look directly at a naagloshii— a skinwalker— with my Sight, and in addition to rendering me gibberingly insane for the better part of a day, it took four trips to the laundromat to get the stain out of those jeans. Even thinking about it now makes me queasy. So I'm gonna move on before I have another involuntary trip to Wackyland.

I closed my eyes, cleared my thoughts, and opened them again, lifting the lid off the metaphorical (I think) third eye as I did so. The church was bathed in a silvery light, and tendrils of it flowed along the walls and floor towards a small room, near where the altar used to be. It didn't look particularly profane, which surprised me. The church had been in ruins for the better part of two decades. Something should have come here in all that time to make it unpleasant.

Lines are important things, especially when you're dealing with spiritual energy. They connect point A to point B, yeah, but where they're going is as important so where they come from. I traced the lines of energy to the center of the main hall, to a brightly glowing spot that looked otherwise unremarkable. There was a syringe there, but not really there. I thought I saw the echoes of hundreds of people standing around that spot, all solemnly bowed in prayer— or mourning.

“Anything?” Murphy asked, and I closed my Sight. I'd Seen her too, before, and it had been… interesting.

“What happened at this spot?” I asked, pointing to where the syringe had been. “Something about it feels glowy.”

“Glowy?” Murphy gave me a look, but continued anyway. “That's where the OD was found.”

Aha. “Okay, so there's something here that's linking to that back room. It's… not quite a ley line, but it's similar. Strong power going from here to there.”

“Makes sense,” she shrugged. “This was a church. Lots of people praying.”

“Yeah, but these lines are fresher,” I said, scratching my head. “And prayer would lead them to the crucifix, or the altar, not the green room.”

“Sacristy,” Murphy corrected me.

“Sacre bleu cheese?” I ventured.

“The sacristy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It's where most of the tools for celebrating Mass are stored when they're not in use.”

“Right, like I said,” grinning wildly. “Green room. Or backstage?”

“You need Jesus, Dresden,” she said, punching me lightly in the ribs. She hadn't meant to, but she had hit the spot where I had most recently suffered a broken bone. Recently, in this instance, meaning ‘last night’. Poker night in the Nevernever had a tendency to get a little raucous, and that was after I had explained to the others that poker was a card game, and not the designation of the weapon du jour.

But even though I had an injury that would have put down most mere mortals for a couple days, only two vanilla humans in the world had the benefit of the mantle of a Knight of Faerie. I was one of them. Through a lot of things that I don't want to go into here, I had become the Winter Knight, chief mortal agent of the Winter Queen, Queen of Air and Darkness, Mab.

It involved sex. And so far as I was concerned, it had most certainly not been as good for me as it was for her. For one thing, I had serious issues about sex without love. For another, the experience was like sticking my junk in a power socket, and that was just the foreplay.

Like I said. I don't want to go into it here.

Mab had my balls in a vice— metaphorically speaking, though almost certainly she had considered the literal interpretation of that phrase— and so, for the time being, I was hers. This made me a lot tougher than a ‘vanilla’ human, or so it seemed; I had greater strength, endurance, and recovery than most mortals. But that came with a price— two of them. First, while I could shrug off the pain of most anything short of a bullet, I still had to on some level deal with the gunshot wound afterwards. I could ignore a broken leg, maybe not even notice it, until it buckled under me. And the second was the real kicker: I had inherited the faerie weakness to iron. If even a sliver of the stuff got under my skin, I would lose the protection and power of the Winter Mantle, and that meant pain. Lots of pain. The Winter Mantle was about the only thing keeping me from being in a wheelchair, like a frazzled Professor X.

It was a small twinge of pain that flashed across my face, but Karrin caught it all the same. “What happened?”

“Nothing big,” I mumbled. “I learned last night that fifteen of a kind beats a straight.”

—

Once I knew what to look for, following the tendrils of silvery power through the sacristy was a task I could do without employing my Sight. It was not really something I did with my eyes, at any rate. Power calls to power, and the strands of whatever this was were damn near shouting at me. The trail led through the open doorway from the altar apse and past another lintel, this one with the remnants of light wood doors hanging from the hinges. Through that lovely carnage, we went down a flight of slate stairs into a basement. Somehow there was light shining down through holes amid the pews, illuminating most of the area. It looked like a wrecked bingo hall. Probably had been used as one, judging by the tattered electrical conduits hanging above the elevated area in the back. Some slabs of drywall formed a makeshift ramp leading from the floor to the stage, which looked about as sturdy as anything did in this place.

“Pleasant,” Murphy said. Some shadows passed overhead, probably rats, or light debris being blown in by the wind. “What’s this all about?”

There was a table on the stage, and amongst the dust covering it there was a scrawled “Drink Me” next to an empty glass. The glass itself had a thin layer of dust on it, too— it had been dry for a couple weeks at the earliest. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I murmured, partly to amuse myself, partly to get to the reference first. “Was this here the first time around?” I asked.

“No clue,” Murphy replied, stepping up next to me. “Been years since I had the file on hand. I never made a copy.”

“So what’s a good girl like you doing poking around a cold case like this?”

“I don’t know, actually,” she replied, slowly. “Maybe it’s like Sanya… or Butters, I guess. Maybe I just felt something was here.”

The mention of the names drew a smile to my lips. Murphy had just named the only two active Knights of the Cross: holy warriors wielding Swords (capitalized s-words!) that were forged around nails from the very Cross that was the progenitor of the one that once hung upstairs. Sanya, a big, friendly Russian, wielded the Sword of Hope, Esperacchius, and trotted the globe as a kind of knight-errant, doing the will of a God he didn’t entirely believe in himself. Apparently, the faith needed to wield a Sword of the True Cross only needed to go one way. The other, Waldo Butters, had been until recently a medical examiner with Chicago Forensics. As of a few months ago, however, the Sword of Faith, Fidelacchius, had become in his hands the glowing, trademark-infringing implement of the very newest Knight of the Cross. The third and final Sword, Amoracchius— the Sword of Love— was awaiting its new handler.

Karrin had been offered a Sword. More than once. She turned it down almost every time, and it didn’t help that the last time she had held one of them, Fidelacchius had been destroyed. (It got better.) So it didn’t take a genius to think that it would be a very long time before she picked one up again. Me, I had a different theory… but this isn’t the time for it.

“If you spook it, a Knight will come,” I said, intoning it with as much gravitas as I did not have. Murphy rolled her eyes. “But you may have a point, Murph,” I added. “Hunches and the subconscious aren’t always random. Might be someone messing around, and something in the back of your mind connected the dots before you yourself did.”

“Or,” Murphy said, “it’s just a coincidence.” A moment passed, and neither of us spoke. Only the sound of passing vehicular traffic on the street above and outside was audible. I blinked, wondering if I might have pushed her a little too far. Murphy was the kind of person who hated being kept in the dark, and I’d spent the better part of the last year or so doing exactly that. I really didn’t want to press her buttons any more than was funny.

“Is someone down there?” a voice said, from the stairwell behind us. Instantly, I had my hand on the makeshift blasting rod I’d made.

Murphy had her automatic out as well. “Identify yourself!” she barked.

“Chicago PD,” the voice said. “Now your turn.”

“Karrin Murphy and Harry Dresden,” I said. “Private investigators.” The beat cop coming down the stairs still had his service weapon out, and Murph and I did, too. Lots of things could sound and look like a CPD trooper, and two random names followed by a rather shady occupation wouldn’t give that cop much to go on.

“Stay back, D, I got this,” the cop said, over his shoulder. He was a pretty good looking guy— younger than Murphy or I, built athletically, for speed and power in equal measure. He had short-cropped brown hair, lightish skin, and stood somewhere around six feet tall. I didn’t get a good look at his face just yet, as he was still turned towards his partner. I noticed the safety was still on his weapon, but his thumb was near the tiny switch. Good trigger discipline, I thought. Not too many cops in Chicago these days had the sense to ask questions before they shot. “Sure thing, Sergeant Strange,” a voice said behind him.

The cop turned to face Murphy, and I got a better look at his features. Again, good looking kid. Young, clean-shaven. A streak of blue hair dye was visible in the hairline over his right temple, a vibrant contrast from the rest of his by-the-book features. He had a strong, square jaw below a lean face. The quarterback build really fit him, especially with the face.

“Sergeant,” Murphy said. “What brings you down here?”

“Reports of someone sneaking around, ma’am,” Sergeant Strange said, holstering his weapon. “Hey, I remember you. Sergeant Murphy, with SI, right?”

“That’s right,” Murphy replied, putting her piece away, too. “But that was a while ago.”

“Damn shame, too,” the cop said, grimacing. “You did good work. The force needs more like you.” He started to turn towards me.

“Thank you, Sergeant… what was it again?” Murph tilted her head to glance at the nametag on the cop’s chest, but just missed it as he turned.

Eyes are pretty important things, as far as the supernatural is concerned. Granted, they’re pretty important for mundane things like seeing, too, but for practitioners, they’re not just input tools. When a wizard locks eyes with someone, they run a risk of starting what’s called a soulgaze. Imagine that you could see someone for who they truly were, moving past the defenses and masks they wear. It would be devastating if someone had some bad secrets kept within them that suddenly leaked out to a meddling magical PI. The problem was that the soulgaze worked both ways. You could see in, and they could see in, too. Even though it was something that could only happen once per pair of people, it worked along the same rules as the Sight. Whatever you saw in there, it wasn’t going away.

A soulgaze was something that wizards only did, intentionally, with people they absolutely trusted. Or with people who needed to be convinced that the wizard was being honest and forthright. The two people involved in a soulgaze mingled their minds and consciousnesses in a manner that was impossible to replicate outside of metaphysical means. It was overwhelming to be faced with the entirety of another person.

The cop’s eyes locked on to mine before I could dart them to what was left of the ceiling. For the briefest instant, just before the soulgaze overtook me, I had the distinct impression that he hadn’t just been looking for my face, but was intentionally trying to look me straight in the eye. I had only a few moments to prepare myself to look upon the totality of Sergeant Strange, whoever he was. Still, he was just a cop— a normal cop, as far as I could tell. One careless soulgaze later, he’d have learned his lesson.

I blinked. One soulgaze was exhausting enough. But around the beat cop, I saw seven other people. And every single one of them had their eyes directly locked onto mine. One soulgaze was routine. Eight, at the same time, was just not possible. Except, apparently, it was happening now.

“Stars and stones,” I gasped, when it was over. The cop blinked and staggered back, too. My vision swam and dimmed, as I sat down hard on the concrete floor. The cop’s nametag, reading “W. GORSKI”, was the only thing I could make out just before the stars flowed across the entirety of my vision. “What the—”


	2. Initial Contact

-Chicago, United States-  
“—fuck just happened?!” Wolfgang spat, clutching his head.

I didn’t have much of a better answer, and I’d actually been here for it. The other six of my cluster, all torn involuntarily from whatever it was they were doing at the moment and brought here, were in various states of recovering from the sudden flash of psychic pain. The effect was not that different from when Riley had been suffocating, way back in the beginning of all of this— one moment, we were safe, the next, bam.

“He’s… wow,” Nomi said, stepping closer. “Will, do you know this guy?”

“Only by reputation,” I said. Well, not really said. It was as if I had said it, but the only people who could hear it were my cluster. And, I guess, anyone who might have been Visiting me at the moment, but I didn’t see anyone. “Dresden is one of the more colorful guys running around Chitown. He used to call himself a ‘wizard’. But, it’s strange. I thought he was—”

-Akranes, Iceland-  
“—dead,” Riley said. We were now standing in the small bedroom that Riley had been, up until a moment ago, preparing to sleep in. I smiled slightly. Her silver pajamas were still a little crooked on her. She noticed my attention, and blushed. We were the closest of the cluster; not really saying much, considering just what being in a cluster means. Our bond is something deeper than family. The eight of us are sensates— homo sensorium, an alternate strain of humanity that has the ability to link with others of our kind to share knowledge, experiences, skills… each other. I’m not good at explaining this stuff. That’s more Nomi and her wife, Amanita. Anyway, not important right now.

“On it,” Nomi said, vanishing from view. She did that sometimes.

“He is very handsome,” Lito said, staring at nothing. Or, presumably, at Dresden. Just because he was here doesn’t mean he wasn’t also there. We had all learned that lesson very early on. “Tall. Daniela would like him.”

“And Hernando would be jealous,” Capheus said, wryly. His voice was still tinged with sleep.

“The girl,” Sun said. “Friend of yours?” Time never seemed to bother Sun all that much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever remembered seeing her sleep. I mean, I know she does it. I think.

-Chicago, United States-  
“Sergeant Murphy,” I said again, my hand on my weapon. “Please step away from Mr. Dresden.”

“Hell’s bells, Will, calm down,” Dresden muttered. “I mean. Wait. How do I know your name?”

“That’s a very good question,” I replied, evenly. Wolfgang strode up next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. The presence was comforting, even if he wasn’t really there. Wolfgang was Visiting, which meant that he was here and not-here at the same time. He felt what I felt, saw what I saw, that sort of thing. At any moment he could step in and help me out. Only sensates within their birth cluster could do that, and it was called Sharing. “Would you please put your hands where I can see them, Mr. Dresden?”

“Will, calm down,” Nomi said. “Bug got the info. Harry Dresden is a private detective in Chicago, and he’s also a big name in… magic? Wait, Bug, this is a dead link—” and she was gone again.

Dresden had put his hands up, slightly above his chest. The guy was taller than me by almost a head, which meant that if he wanted he could reach out, take a couple steps, and grab me like I was a basketball. Actually… “Murph, can you please let this guy know I’m not a threat?” he grumbled, his voice low. “I’ve got an image to maintain. Y’know. Barest veneer of respectability.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, a memory coming back to me from my first few days on the force. “I remember you. The NBA-sized gay burglar at the Raith place.”

Lito was on the other side of me in a heartbeat. “Que?”

“What?” Dresden echoed. “NBA— Jesus, Murphy, I thought you got them to stop that,” he groaned.

Sgt. Murphy was doubled over in laughter now. “Can’t. Cops. We never let anything go,” she wheezed. It was a little hard to take her seriously when she was like that.

I relaxed. The story about Dresden at the Raith place had been before my time, but it tracked with what I had… experienced just a few moments ago. There was a feeling that had been close to what it felt like to Visit someone, but it had been a lot more intense. We had only experienced anything like that one time before, during a moment of pure emotion during a concert that Riley’s dad was performing in. It had almost cost us dearly to feel that way.

Capheus frowned. “This is strange,” he murmured. “I think we can trust him, but he is definitely not a sensate. He is something else.” Beside him, Sun nodded wordlessly.

I put my piece away and stepped forward, lowering my voice. “Look, Mr. Dresden, I think we need to talk in private,” I said. Murphy was still recovering from the giggles. “I assume you have some questions for us, too.”

“Us?” he said, before the penny dropped. “Yeah. I do. You know MacAnally’s pub?”

“On it,” Nomi said. “Little place. Hole in the wall. Cash only. Good reviews on Yelp.”

“Assume I do,” I said. “Meet you there in two hours?”

“Off the clock and off the record,” he said. “I’ll come alone if you do.”

I smirked— bad habit from Wolfgang. “As alone as I can be.”

—

MacAnally’s was, true to Nomi’s description, a hole in the wall. Almost literally. It was set into the basement of an old brick building, but as soon as you got inside you could tell it had probably been there first. There didn't appear to be any pattern or design to the tables, nor the support pillars. It seemed deliberately chaotic. It was really unsettling.

Also, like, as soon as I walked in, my cell phone stopped working. It just shut down in the middle of a video call with Felix. Wolfgang had to scramble to tell him I hadn't hung up on him.

Dresden was seated at the bar, with an enormous grey dog of some breed at his feet. He had a bottle of beer in front of him, opened and mostly empty, and was talking to the bartender. The barman was a stocky bald guy, maybe middle aged or later, with a spotless white apron over a black t-shirt and jeans. Behind him there was, I shit you not, a wood-fired stove with a ventilation hood above it.

“Accorded Neutral Territory,” Sun read off of a burned-wood plaque on the pillar nearest the bar. “Neutral for who? Gangs?”

“This place doesn't look like any gang hideout I know,” Wolfgang said.

I nodded. “Can't exactly see Johnny Marcone sitting down for a beer here.”

“He likes the steak sandwiches,” Dresden said, turning to face me. Wolfgang tensed up, something I felt as if my own body had been injected with adrenaline. “Let's get a table and talk, Sergeant.” He picked up a small tray, loaded with two sandwiches, two bottles of beer, and a basket of chips, and led me to the table closest to the door. I tried to seat myself against the wall, but the huge dog blocked my path.

“So, I don't think we properly introduced ourselves,” I said into the awkward silence as Dresden laid out the food. “I'm—”

“First things first,” he interrupted. “This place is important to me. I agreed to meet you here under the understanding that, if we have to throw down, it won't be here. If you can't agree to that, Mouse can show you the door.”

“Are you expecting trouble, Mr. Dresden?”

“All I'm saying is that in my line of work, it wouldn't exactly surprise me. Neutral Territory. Take it or leave it.”

“Sun’s got a point,” Kala said. “Who set up this place as neutral?” I relayed the question.

“You really don't know?” Dresden said, incredulous. “Stars and stones… okay. Taking it from the top. You were right to try to introduce yourself, so I'll go first. You want the short version, or my full job title?”

“Let's be thorough,” I said.

He took a deep breath. “I am Harry Dresden, Wizard. Private investigator. Warden of the White Council of Wizards in Edinburgh, Warden of Chicago, Warden of the prison of Demonreach, Knight of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, and mortal consort of the Winter Queen, the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

I blinked. “Okay, you lost me after ‘private investigator’.”

Nomi nudged me. “Keep him talking,” she said; “the more proper nouns he gives me, the more I can dig up.”

“So… does the Queen of Air and Darkness have a name?” I asked.

“Yeeeessss,” Dresden said, drawing out the word. “But I really can’t say it. And if you find out, you probably shouldn’t, either.”

“Mab,” Lito said. “The Queen of Air and Darkness is Mab. Shakespeare.”

“Why shouldn’t I say ‘Mab’?” I asked.

No sooner had the word come out of my mouth than the temperature in the bar dropped. Plummeted, really. I had been keeping my voice low, but still, several of the other patrons turned to look at me.

“That’s why, kid,” Dresden said, sighing and rubbing his forehead. “Say her name once, she gets irritated. Say it twice, she starts paying attention. Three times, and…”

“And?”

“She shows up, irritated and with her full attention on you,” Dresden said. “I did that once, by accident. It did not end well.”

“Okay,” I said, frowning deeper. The temperature seemed to be returning to normal, but I was wondering just how much of that was due to any hocus-pocus, or how much of that was the chill wind in Iceland.

-Akranes, Iceland-  
Riley was almost asleep, bundled up warm in her bed.

-Chicago, United States-  
So, yeah. Not wind.

“I get that you don’t believe me,” Dresden said. “Look. Let me buy you a shot. What are you drinking?”

“Tequila,” I said, in unison with Lito.

“Okay, double tequila.” He stood up to order the drink, and I stopped him.

“Just one minute,” I said. “What do you know about me? What are you?”

He shrugged my hand off. “Just a minute,” he said. “Promise. Then I’ll talk.”

He came back with a shooter glass filled with clear-ish liquid. “Give it a sniff. Make sure.” I sipped at the drink; sure enough, it was tequila. Or at least mezcal, Lito murmured. I still can’t tell the difference. “Now, you know how hard it is to freeze alcohol, right?”

Kala immediately answered. “80 proof alcohol… should freeze at about minus ten degrees Centigrade.”

Dresden cupped his right hand around the shooter glass, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Infriga.” Almost immediately, frost crawled up the side of the glass where I had sipped it, and the liquid seemed to expand slightly, filling the glass as it froze solid. He turned the glass over, and out slid a perfectly frozen cylinder of tequila.

“Whoa,” Nomi said. The other six nodded. “How’d he do that?”

“Magic,” Dresden said. “It’s real. Magic, wizards, the Force… it’s all real.”

“The Force?” I asked, an eyebrow raised.

“You’re the first person to not get that one,” he mumbled. Then he cleared his throat, and added, “Not really. I think. Depends on what that Sword is doing. Not important right now. What is important, is, I’ve come out. Now you.”

-San Francisco, United States-  
Nomi’s apartment was cozy, in a chaotic sort of way. She and Amanita had been co-habitating for years before they finally got married, and the two women had added Bug to their home a few months before that. There were computer wires strewn everywhere, covered by some rugs in places where there would be heavy foot traffic.

Nomi herself sat at her desk, which itself was covered in papers, keyboards, and a standing mount for at least five monitors. A laptop was open in front of all of these, and it was this that she was working on. The laptop had been a gift from Rajan and Kala, a high-powered model customized with a metallic transgender flag painted on the lid. She loved it.

“None of the names he gave us came up with anything,” Nomi said. “Just myths and fiction. I can’t verify anything.”

“Hard thing, not knowing,” Wolfgang said, walking out from behind the monitors to peer over her shoulder. “But I have faith in you. You’ll find it.”

“That’s the thing,” Nomi said. “There’s something that Bug gave me a couple hours ago, but it’s locked down extremely tight, behind security that I have never even seen before.”

That raised my eyebrow again. Nomi Marks-Caplan is a woman who knows her way around computers in much the same way a fish knows its way around water. If it’s electronic, she can bend it to her will like… well, like magic. “That doesn’t seem like the kind of security you see every day.”

“You don’t see it every century,” Nomi mumbled. “These symbols look like… what did you call them, Neets?”

Amanita Caplan-Marks wasn’t as tall as her wife, but she certainly looked like she was. Chunky heeled boots clomped their way across the riser-boards that the desks were placed on as she rolled her chair next to Nomi’s. “Runes,” she said, frowning. “We saw stuff like this when I was doing that mission down in Atlanta. White supremacist terrorists were using them to send coded messages. It’s an ancient alphabet found mainly in Scandinavia.”

“Right,” I said. “But what does that have to do with computer security? Are those psychos hiding something here?”

“I don’t think so,” Nomi said, slowly. “This has a more… I don’t know, natural feel to it than the white-power wannabes’ short codes. Like, if they were passing notes in class, this is like… like poetry. Or a song.”

“How do you know?” Sun asked. “Can you read it?”

Nomi shook her head. “Not read it, so much as see some patterns. I think. Still don’t know how it connects to this firewall, though.”

-Chicago, United States-  
“Keep at it, Nomes,” I said. Back to the pub. Dresden had just picked up his beer. That’s one thing I love about Visiting— it can take time only if you really want it to. Other times, being in two places at once was very beneficial. Wolfgang had been the one to teach us that particular trick, and he never quite got around to telling us who taught him.

I hesitated before I started speaking. “Mister Dresden,” I said, “does the word ‘sensate’ mean anything special to you?”

Dresden took a long pull from his beer before answering. “I think so,” he said, “but maybe not in the way it does for you. Explain it to me.” Before I could even take a breath, he added, “And don’t let your sandwich get cold, or Mouse here will beat you to it.”

I smiled, and took a bite. Wow. This was good. “Okay,” I said. “People are born on this planet every day, right? Lots of them. And some of them are born at exactly the same moment, across the world. Now, when that happens, and those people have a very specific genetic trait, they’re called ‘sensates’, and they form what we call a ‘cluster’. With me so far?” Dresden nodded slowly. “Sensates are a different species of human. Not better, not worse, just different. And we share a connection within our cluster, and within other sensates who we lock eyes with.”

“Good story,” Dresden said, “but it’s still not much in the way of, you know, verbs and adjectives. What makes you guys so special?”

“We are able to see, hear, and feel what others in our cluster can, instinctively. We can share our knowledge and skills,” I said. “I’m here talking to you in Chicago, but right behind me is Capheus, a member of my cluster from Nairobi.” I pointed over my shoulder; Capheus grinned and waved, before remembering that Dresden couldn’t see him. “Next to him is Nomi, from San Francisco, and next to her is Lito, from Mexico City.”

Dresden blinked once and defocused his eyes for a half second, before shaking his head. “Huh. That’s weird.”

“Hey, I didn’t judge you,” I said.

“No no,” Dresden said, hastily. “I meant something’s weird with me. I can’t see them.”

“Only I can,” I said. “Well, at least, only I can see my cluster unless they’re really here. When they’re not, we call that ‘Visiting’.” I pulled out my cell phone from my front pocket. “Here, I’ll prove it.”

“Wait—” Dresden said.

My phone was dead. Not just shut down, but DEAD. The screen had warped and bulged, and there was the faint scent of burned popcorn coming from it. “Uh…” I started. “Nomi, I thought you said this was the kind that didn’t explode.”

“It isn’t!” she protested, but Dresden rolled his eyes. “Technology and wizards don’t get along, kid,” he said. “We have to be very careful around electricity. If I start flinging around the heavy duty juju, it could blow out the lights for a dozen blocks. Anything more complicated than a lightbulb will make some pretty fireworks, too.”

“Okay,” I said, frowning. “I think it’s under warranty anyway.” Just to be safe, I put the phone back in my jacket pocket. “There a phone around here? Or will that suddenly start playing Billie Holiday or something?” Dresden pointed to the end of the bar, where there was an old rotary landline phone hanging up on the wall. Nomi made some disgusted noises at it before coming back and mumbling a phone number to Kala. She stared at Dresden for a moment longer.

The phone began to ring, and the bartender answered it. He stared at the receiver for a half second before calling, “Harry.” Dresden went to answer it, and I decided to listen in.

-Johor Bahru, Malaysia-  
Kala stood on a balcony overlooking the city, with noontime sun obscured by heavy clouds. She held a blocky cell phone in her hand— probably a satellite phone, I think— and was speaking calmly and clearly. “Mister Dresden, my name is Kala Rasal,” she said. “You are currently speaking with my friend Will Gorski, yes?”

Dresden’s voice came over the phone a half second or so after I heard it in Chicago. “Yeah, I am,” he said. “How’d you get this number? I mean, I thought this line was disconnected.”

“One of my cluster read the number off of the phone and gave it to me,” Kala said, not missing a beat.

“Right,” Dresden said, “but Will didn’t move an inch.”

“He didn’t have to,” she replied. “One of the perks of being sensorium.”

“Uh… my Latin’s rusty…”

“Homo sensorium, the scientific name for sensates.” Kala smiled. “It’s all right. Latin was difficult for me at first, too.”

“So you’re calling me from, where, exactly?” Dresden said, ignoring the remark.

“Malaysia. I’m here on business with my husband. But I think that we’ve proven our point. I won’t take any more of your time,” Kala said.

“Wait,” Dresden said. “Just one more thing. How many fingers am I holding up?”

-Chicago, United States-  
“As I recall,” Kala said, trying not to burst out into the laughter that had overcome Capheus and Wolfgang, “that is a particularly rude gesture to be making with your left hand, Mister Dresden.” She hung up, leaving the wizard staring at the phone. I turned back to the table, took another sip of my beer— man, this stuff was good— and grinned as he sat back down.

“Okay,” he said, smiling. “You’re the real thing, all right. So, where do we go from here?”

“What were you doing at the church?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Told you already,” he replied evenly. “Cold case. Checking out a suicide. That church mean something special to you?”

“You could say that,” I said. “Our mother died there just after giving birth to our cluster.” I held up a hand to interrupt his confused glance. “Long story, not relevant right now. Your suicide was a murder, all right, but it’s been solved. My turn.” I closed my eyes. “That thing with the eyes. Is that going to happen every time?”

“No,” Dresden said. “It only happens once. Another long, irrelevant story. You got a look at me, I got a look at you. How many of you are there?”

“In my cluster?” I said. “Eight, counting me. Sensates, well, that’s a tougher question. Until recently we had to be in hiding. We haven’t done a formal census yet. How many wizards?”

“Thousands,” Dresden said. “More learning every year. That’s leaving out all the other spooky stuff that could be going on. Your Visiting thing, can that be taught?”

I started to reply, when Sun ran into the pub, seemingly out of nowhere. A panic-Visit was like that. “Will,” she said, barely stopping. “You need to come look.”

-Busan, South Korea-  
Sun sat in a large office chair, across the room from an equally large flat-screen television set. I was the last one to arrive, as the other six were already fixated on the screen. I could understand the news announcer’s rapid, panicky Korean just as if he were speaking English.

There were dead bodies on the screen. Horribly mangled dead bodies, torn to shreds, as if they had been chopped like rough cabbage. Some were only recognizable as human after close inspection showed them still wearing scraps of clothing; others were just piles of meat and bone and blood. Police were taking photos— at least, the ones who weren’t actively throwing up in the background of the nightmarish scene.

In the center of the carnage, though, one body remained relatively intact. The throat had been cut, viciously so— probably with a serrated knife or a rough shard of scrap metal, definitely not with any kind of precision— but the man in the dark business suit didn’t seem to have shown any signs of a struggle. His face was calm, almost like he was sleeping.

Lito turned away and retched. Nomi was tearing up. But I looked closer at the screen, and the chyron at the bottom, just above the stock ticker.

“TAE PARK MURDERED - JOONG-KI BAK MISSING, PRESUMED DANGEROUS”

“Well, shit,” Riley said.


	3. Winter's True Heart is Wherever She Happens to Be

Gorski left in a hurry, offering to pay for the meal. On any other day I would have taken him up on that, but when I ordered, Mac had grunted something to the effect of “no charge”. I chalked that one up to Mac’s Brew of the Gods. Gorski and his entourage would likely be back for more of that. They always come back.

Even without the money, Gorski had given me something far more valuable: a puzzle. Wizards are known for being insufferable know-it-alls, and that's not an unfair label. God knows I’ve had to deal with some jerks on the Council who think they're just a few pages away from genuine omniscience. Leaving aside the fact that more than one of those jerks would think the same of me, the bottom line is that we know a lot, and we enjoy knowing things. So, when something that is genuinely outside of our sphere of knowledge comes along, it’s a rare treat.

I admit that, when I started out, I didn’t have a solid appreciation for the thought that there were things out there that I didn’t know. But as a side effect of learning more about magic and what it is capable of, I’ve found myself drawn to the harder questions. Granted, some of those stray dangerously close to the Laws of Magic, and the violation thereof would be a Very Bad Idea. But thinking on things never hurt me. Not yet, anyway. And as long as that was true, I would continue to think.

Because, honestly? As wizards go? I’m not the sharpest tool in the crayon box. And people know that. So they tend to underestimate me. And they definitely underestimate just how much they underestimate me. If that doesn’t make sense to you as to why it’s an advantage, well, as Butters is fond of saying, “get on my level.”

I had just returned Mouse to the Carpenter household, where the dogasaurus invictus served as the companion animal to my daughter Maggie, when I felt the chill up my spine. Nine times out of ten this meant something from the Winter Court of Faerie was nearby and ready to try to kill me. The tenth time it was usually my alleged retainer, Cat Sith, who had a message for me in addition to his contemptfully intense desire to try to kill me. I haven’t quite figured out which one of those outcomes is the good one.

“Good evening, Sir Knight,” the hissing voice called out from just beyond the fence that surrounded the Carpenter house. “Our Queen has a mission for you, one which absolutely must be completed quickly.”

I grimaced. “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”

“Not so, Sir Knight,” Cat Sith said, leaping up onto a white picket fence post. Sith was no mere cat; he was a malk, which is to a cat what a blender is to a butter knife. In my experience he has even less of a sense of humor than either the blender or the knife. “Our Queen has made the use of the absolute quite clear.”

I rolled my eyes. “Our Queen,” I said, “can take a number. This is my day off.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Sith said. “You must be off, if you have left yourself open to death so many times today. You are welcome for my protection, Sir Knight.”

That was a thought that would linger. Cat Sith might not like me, but he was as obligated to protect me as I was to serve the Queen of Air and Darkness. If he had saved my hide multiple times… “How many?”

“Six.”

“That’s not so—”

“Six that I handled personally,” he continued. “Your retinue of the Little Folk took care of at least four more.” Yikes. “If you wish, I could accomplish what your assailants could not, so that you may be ready for their like the next time?”

“No!” I said, rather less composed than the single exclamation point makes it sound. “That’s not necessary. I thank you for your service, Cat Sith.”

“Is there nothing else, then?” Sith said, licking himself someplace unpleasant.

“The mission, please,” I said. I would say that getting compliance out of Cat Sith was like pulling teeth, but I don’t want to give him any ideas.

“I don’t know it.” He turned and gagged up a hairball onto the sidewalk outside the fence.

“So who does?”

“Our Queen, obviously,” Sith said, and I could swear I saw him roll his eyes. “If you are not intelligent enough to understand that—”

“Fine,” I said. “So she wants to tell me in person?”

“That, I would imagine, is the entire point of sending me to summon you.”

“You have exactly ten syllables to start telling me where I’m meeting Mab, before I start looking up all the very interesting ways there are to skin a cat.” I grinned as menacingly as I could.

Cat Sith stared at me for a long beat, then said, “I was told to direct you to Arctis Tor.” He bared his sharp teeth. Eleven syllables. Of course.

“The next time I see you, it had better be on a plate in a cheap Korean restaurant,” I growled. “Get out of here. I’m going.”

—

In the strictest sense, Arctis Tor is only metaphorically “the Heart of Winter”. The enormous tower of ice and other crystals is the primary stronghold of the Winter Court, and is largely a symbolic seat of power. Mab is Winter, and Winter’s true heart is wherever she happens to be. Stop that heart, and goodbye Winter. But only a few people are really clued into that. And I was betting that Mab herself didn’t know that I was one of them. If she was, however, she was really good at not letting on by doing ridiculous things like, y’know, not forcing me to save her bacon at every turn.

The role of the Winter Knight is an ancient one, a compact between the Unseelie Court and the mortal world. Faeries are not allowed to directly kill humans. But sometimes, some humans need killing— at least, from the faeries’ perspective. That’s where the Knight comes in. As a mortal contracted to one of the two Courts, the Knight can act to execute the will of their Queen within the mortal world. Usually the operative word there is execute.

I had been sent on two major missions for Mab already in my tenure as the Winter Knight. The first had been hellish. The second one took me literally into Hell. I briefly wondered what she had for me that could possibly top “burgling the Lord of the Dead” on the list of Things Harry Dresden Did That He Really Would Have Preferred Not To.

The elevator stopped at what I presumed was somewhere in the vicinity of Neptune, and the doors of ice, shaped into an intricate latticework not unlike the gratework of the elevator in my old office building, dissolved into snowflakes that blew away on an unseen breeze. Huh. Well, I suppose someone’s got a union contract to carve those. I stepped off the elevator, and glanced behind me; a thick mist of water vapor, chilly even from the foot or so away that I was, had filled in to render the elevator completely indistinguishable from the wall into which it was set. The sidhe love their little party tricks, let me tell you.

As glamour went, this part of the tower hardly fit the description. It looked like a dumpy downtown Chicago office, indistinguishable from a thousand such cubicles scattered throughout the city. A broad oaken desk sat at the far side of the room, with a beat up high-backed leather chair behind it. A few filing cabinets were set along the wall— short ones, so that they didn’t obstruct the view out of the large picture window. A couple of smaller chairs in patchwork upholstery sat in front of the desk, one decidedly more comfortable than the other. When I had wanted to impress a client, I would pile books and folders in the crummy chair; when I was irked, I would do the opposite. Only the comfy chair had anything in it. It took me just about as long as it‘s probably taking you to notice that, with the exception of the big window, this was my office.

I mean, it wasn’t really my office. My office had burned down just before my trip to Chichen Itza. (Again, it was not my fault.) But this was a fascinating replica. Almost everything was as it had been back home.

Home. I had to keep reminding myself that, as much as Mab and her merry band of psychopaths would like me to believe otherwise, Arctis Tor was not, and would never be, my home. That was the little trick that I saw through as I opened one of the filing cabinets behind my desk. It was empty. You couldn’t ask for a better metaphor for what this place was: hollow. Gilded tin. All style, nothing of substance. The faeries take a cargo-cult approach to mortal business, inasmuch as they really give a damn about mortal business.

I put my leather duster on the coat rack next to the window, sat down, and stared out at Winter for a moment. It was remarkable to note that the faeries were capable of true beauty. All I had to do was look out and see it in the very nature of this place. The howling winds, the cold crystallizing water into maddeningly precise designs that only looked random. All of the really amazing stuff that I saw out there was simply Winter being Winter. It’s when folks try going too far outside of their wheelhouses that the really ugly stuff starts. I sighed, wishing I had a cup of hot cocoa to warm my hands.

After a longer pause than I would have given to anyone else, I slowly turned my chair around to face the occupant of the comfy chair. “Hi, Mab,” I said, as warmly as I could.

—

“Hello, my Knight,” the Queen of Air and Darkness replied, evenly. “I trust your workspace meets with your approval?”

“Could use a ceiling fan,” I said, “for the full Marlowe effect.”

“I will see to it immediately,” Mab replied, without a trace of anything even in the same dictionary as an emotion. “I have a task for you.”

“Great, because my bank account was starting to run a little dry,” I said, putting as much sarcasm as I could into the remark as I thought it might take for the Winter Queen to pick up on it. Clearly, it wasn’t enough. “What is it this time? Are we going after Amaterasu now?”

“Close,” she replied. “Several of Our subjects have gone missing near the Korean Peninsula. We believe that this may be the work of an…” She paused, giving the word emphasis. “Adversary.”

Adversary. Nemesis. Well, this just got bad. “I thought you had that under control. I mean, Cat Sith was back to nor… that is, back to being Cat Sith.”

“Tell me, my Knight,” Mab said, leaning forward. “What do you mean by ‘under control’?”

“I mean that whatever it is that gets into those who are… infected, I guess, you can get it out of them. You did it with Lea. Presumably you also did it with Sith.”

“If you wanted to purchase a house,” Mab continued, “you could do that now, correct?”

She wasn’t wrong. As much as I didn’t like to think too hard on how I got it, my bank account was not nearly as low as I had lied to her about. Binder had been good to his word and I had several… several zeroes written in my savings passbook. And yes, I still have a passbook. Wizards and ATM cards don’t get along. I nodded. “Yeah, but…”

“And given that you can do it once, then,” she concluded, “is it fair to presume that you can do it at will, indefinitely?”

Ah. “It costs you to cure them,” I said.

“Far more dearly than mere wealth, my Knight,” she said, and for the briefest instant I thought I heard what sounded like pain in her voice. That couldn’t be right. The sidhe are beyond emotional pain, and their Queen that much further beyond them. “It is something I… I can only do for those most necessary to the survival of Winter.”

“I notice that didn’t include Maeve.” Instantly I regretted saying that. Maeve had been the Winter Lady, second in command of the court, but had been infected by the whatever it is that Nemesis actually is. This had been bad on more levels than just the obvious— not just because a powerful faerie had been suborned to the will of an Outsider, but because until it happened, nobody even considered that it was even possible. Leanansidhe— my literal faerie godmother— had been infected, as had Cat Sith. What made them more worthy of inoculation than Mab’s own daughter?

Mab didn’t react. At all. That scared me. A little.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I will overlook your impudence this time,” Mab said. “Your perspective is limited, after all. Suffice it to say that there are factors at work that are beyond your capability to tally, and there are risks which cannot be undertaken, no matter the reward for success. Your task is, fortunately, not one of those risks. And you are not irreplaceable.”

Strictly speaking, Mab couldn’t lie. Faeries just can’t do it. But I knew, and she knew I knew, that she had just gotten as close to a lie as she was capable of. I was just as irreplaceable as she was— as far as she was concerned. If I died, her plans would be set back more than she was prepared to lose. Likewise, if she died, well… if Mab dies, we all lose. Neither one of us were expendable, if Mab was to get what she wanted. Whether or not I was going to let her get what she wanted is a question for another time.

A moment of awkward silence passed. I’m good at awkward when it comes to interactions with nearly godlike beings. “So,” I finally said. “Korea.” My palms started to itch. Wait, Sun is from—

“Korea,” Mab said. “You are to depart as soon as you have made preparations in Chicago.”

“Well, gee, I’d love to, but you haven’t exactly given me much of a lead other than a country on the literal other side of the planet,” I said.

“You are a wizard, are you not?” Mab said. “I imagine I have given you more than you need. I expect that you will carry out this investigation promptly and efficiently.”

“I would hate to let you down,” I growled. “One thing. If it’s a faerie calling this thing into our world, I don’t have a problem with being the axeman. But if it’s a mortal…”

“If a mortal has called the Adversary, there is no longer a distinction between the mortal and the Adversary,” Mab said tonelessly. “Do you understand?”

If I said no, I don’t think it would have made a difference. So I didn’t.

—

A few hours later, I had finished most of the prep work for the trip. I had put the finishing touches on some potions that I had been brewing in the still-coalescing laboratory I had staked out in the stone tower. Most folks found my new home, the island of Demonreach, to be more than a little creepy. To be fair, I had, too. But that was before I had bound the island’s genius loci to me and claimed the island as my personal sanctuary. The uncharted island in the middle of Lake Michigan was now mine— and with it, the millennia-old prison of Really Bad Things that lay beneath it. I broke it, I bought it.

Despite having a spiritual butler with an intellectus— perfect knowledge of the island and everything on, in, or under it— I had been largely working from memory when crafting the potions. The last few times I’d had to do any hardcore brewing, I’d had access to Bob the Skull. Bob was a spirit of intellect; not as semi-omniscient as Demonreach was, but with centuries of accumulated knowledge and experience from hanging out with sorcerers and warlocks. Most of the really nasty stuff Bob had known was deleted when I had stormed the beaches of Normandy (or at least his mind’s recreation thereof) and laid the smackdown on his evil side. But even without that, Bob had been a huge help in being a living(-ish) encyclopedia of magical knowledge.

And here I was, without him. Relying on my own spotty memory and a few books of hastily scribbled notes left over from a few of my bolthole locations around the city. I had never considered the need for a backup of my life’s work; honestly, if my library was gone, there was a better than good chance that I would be right behind it. And, in a way, I kind of had been. But I came back. The books didn’t.

While the potions had brewed, I took some time to meditate and clear my mind. A lot had happened in the last few hours, and I needed some clarity to process it. Meditation was one of the things that both my first master and my first mentor had drilled into me as being important. Granted, only Justin had used the threat of an actual drill, but details, details.

Pieces of the puzzle started to come together in my mind. I had encountered someone with a connection to Korea only a few hours before Mab sends me there to investigate a sighting of the Adversary— Nemesis. I needed to find a way to contact them again, but I really only had Gorski’s number. Even then, I couldn’t be certain that Gorski would be giving me all of the information that Sun was giving him. It would only take a single oversight to put me on a disastrously wrong track, one that could possibly get an innocent person killed. Even if it were unintentional, I couldn’t take that chance. So, I needed a guarantee. I needed an ace in the hole. I needed another set of eyes.

Or maybe… maybe not another set. Maybe just a third one.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, getting up from my meditation. “I hope I still have it.”

When my apartment had burned down, one of the things I had managed to save was a duffel bag full of contraband. This was because, before my apartment burned down, it was raided by the FBI. Long story. Anyway, the bag had a whole bunch of neat stuff that the FBI would not have really appreciated me having. Stuff like depleted uranium, some human bones, ivory that hadn’t necessarily been transported legally (though it had been obtained perfectly legally— a gift from Brother Kanen after the White Court thing happened). The usual. By and large the contents of the duffel bag resembled nothing so much as the manifest from the Batcave; lots of trophies, some tools, the very rare “in case of Darkseid, break glass” item.

I wasn’t entirely sure where an incredibly addictive magical psychotropic drug like ThreeEye fit in that categorization, but it was definitely towards the Anti-Life Equation side of the scale. A real piece of work named Victor Sells had made his name as the Shadowman, manufacturing and peddling that crap throughout Chicago about… wow, had it really been that long ago? A vanilla mortal on it would have an intense psychic attack, which vanilla medics would likely think was a psychotic episode. But a wizard— or even just someone with a smidgen of aptitude— would end up having their Sight forced open for the duration of the trip, in addition to the psychotic episode. The end results were not pretty.

It was a long shot, but I wondered if there wasn’t a way to take the basic concept behind ThreeEye and manage some of its side effects, to just pry the Sight open a little wider. That’s all I really needed. If Gorski’s friends could Visit him and move around independently of him, logically, that meant something of them had to be physically present with Gorski. I just couldn’t see or perceive it. That, I hoped, was something that the Sight could do, with a little help. And it all started with what was inside this little black vial.

There was nothing inside the little black vial.

Son of a bitch. I needed to get my hands on that drug. I needed to get my hands on someone who could analyze it for me and help me make it safer. But I still needed the drug first, because otherwise, there was nothing to analyze. Who would have samples of an old street drug?

“Son of a bitch,” I said. “Marcone.”


	4. Hard Deal

-San Francisco, United States-  
Days like today, I’m really grateful I have Neets and Bug to help me get through the tough times. One of them, I married. The other, well... sometimes you don’t get to choose your family-of-choice. Still, I wouldn’t be here without either of them. And the seven others in my cluster— they’re more than family. They’re my cluster. Might as well even be considered a part of me.

Sorry. I’m not that great with words sometimes. I fell out of the habit of vlogging after the whole “attempted zombie” thing, and never really got back to it. Also, the thing in Korea really rattles me to think about.

-Busan, South Korea-  
We stood in Sun’s office, watching the television continue to rattle off details of the horror in Seoul. Tae Park was dead in the center of the carnage, serene, as if he had gone peacefully. Fifteen other people had been brutally murdered, dismembered. It looked like they had exploded: not that they were in an explosion, but that each and every one of them had themselves become an explosion. “Gross” doesn’t begin to cut it. I was feeling as sick as Lito, but I glanced over at Wolfgang. He was sipping a can of soda. “Doesn’t this bother you?” I asked, incredulously.

“Only thing that bothers me is that I don’t know how they did it,” the gangster replied evenly. “Other than that, eh. It’s just blood.”

“And organs,” Kala said, also calmly. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Freaks.

“Joong-ki is missing,” Capheus said. “Sun. You need to find a place to hide.”

She looked up at him and frowned. “How can I run away?” Sun had a point. She was now the highest-profile member of the Bak Group, one of Korea’s biggest financial firms. Disappearing would be suspect at best and impossible at worst. I don’t think even Bug and I could cover her tracks completely. 

“You could come to Iceland for a visit,” Riley said. “You have that hydroelectric project here, right?”

“No,” Sun said. “I am staying here. If Joong-ki is missing, then we know where he is going.”

“Here,” Will said. It clicked. Joong-ki Bak, Sun’s younger brother, had escaped justice from his embezzlement of millions of won out of the Bak Group’s clients, only to be brought down after Sun escaped prison. Prison, it should be noted, that she had gone to in her brother’s place. They tried to kill each other a couple times, and I helped— slimy little bastard got away because of his connections to a politician, Tae Park. Who, as it turned out, had just been victim number sixteen of the massacre. While we were off putting an end to a threat to sensates everywhere, Sun’s beau, a KNP agent named Kwon-Ho Mun, put both Park and Joong-ki behind bars. Well, for a while, anyway.

“Is it possible that Joong-ki is one of the dead?” Lito said.

“No,” Sun said, flatly. “The report said he was not one of the victims. He is alive. And he is coming for me.”

“Then I think we need to call in some favors,” I said. “Riley? Can you set up a meeting?”

“With who?” The DJ looked at me for half a beat, while everyone else did the same, just slower.

“I think we should take up Ms. River el-Sadaawi’s offer,” I said, grinning. 

\---

-Undisclosed Location-  
When Dr. Brandt— better known as Whispers, or the Cannibal— met his extremely timely death, the organization called BPO ended its ambitions that reached beyond the intentions of its founder, Ruth el-Sadaawi. For every sensate the world over, this marked the moment when “Biologic Preservation Organization” stopped being a perverse joke and returned to being a friend to the whole of the world, sapiens and sensorium alike. People like the Old Man of Hoy and Puck (ugh) took up leadership positions once restricted only to vanilla humans. Though, for some reason, right around that time a whole lot of the group also disappeared or died suddenly. There’s always been rumors that the missing went deeper underground, or were purged violently by someone in the new structure, but the truth is that nobody knows what happened.

There was another matter to deal with, though. BPO had been a well-known group, at least according to international law enforcement. Like me, they had their fingers in databases and filing cabinets from Bangalore to Youngstown; unlike me, they had never been terribly afraid to fiddle with the contents. When the rogue faction died out— and after those who exploited the strife had also met Wolfgang’s favorite toy— BPO had wanted to return to being low profile. Amanita and I helped with that as much as we were able to, but there was only so much scrubbing we could do. In the end, we were able to make it look like the organization had just shut down due to a lack of funding. The truth was more complicated. 

River el-Sadaawi, daughter of Ruth, wanted to make sure that there could never again be an attempt to use BPO, or sensates in general, to conquer and kill. Obviously, that was hard. It was also too much like becoming a police force, which we mentioned. We were shot down, of course, but River recognized our contribution in restoring the original mission. She offered us a chance to leverage BPO’s network of contacts and resources for any purpose we wished, if we agreed to act as a liaison to the Lacuna.

The Lacuna had flatly denied BPO’s request for a direct alliance. And with good reason, too— it had only been a few weeks since BPO agents had tried to kill them all. Like BPO, though, the Lacuna didn’t want to sever ties with us completely. We were the perfect go-between. And none of us wanted to do it. Until now.

“Are you insane?” Lito hissed, as I walked through the dark hall behind Yrsa. “We would be betraying the Lacuna! We need them!”

“Nomi has a point,” Kala said. “If there is to be a time when we need BPO’s reach, I can think of none better than now. For saving one of us.”

“We have resources of our own,” Sun said. “We are not powerless.”

“But why spend what we don’t need to if someone else is offering us a loan?” Wolfgang replied. “Take it. Use it. It costs us little.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lito growled. “Riley?”

-Akranes, Iceland-  
I had hoped that Riley would have responded sooner, but she sat in her bed, upright, clutching the pillow in front of her. Will had his arm wrapped around her back, and the two were resting their heads against each other. It was sweet. I kinda wanted to join in. But, y’know. Priorities.

“This is your call, Riley,” I said. I tried to put on the most gentle expression and tone that I could. “The Lacuna have made you an offer, too. We could work with one, both, or neither.”

Will looked up at me. “Neither? Where does that leave us?”

“Right where we are,” I conceded. “But this is a risk. I want us all to be aware of what we’re asking you to do.”

Riley looked deep into my eyes for a brief moment. I’ve always been attracted to girls, but in that instant I realized that only one other woman on the face of this planet could look at me like that and mean every part of it. Fortunately, I married that one. “I have a choice?”

“Of course you do,” Lito said. “This is madness. Madness!”

“Calm down,” Sun said.

“No,” Riley said, shaking her head slowly. “I mean, I know that I can say no. But it would not be right. I can say no, but what would that say about me? About us?”

“That we don’t sell out our friends,” Capheus said.

“Where do our loyalties lie?” Riley asked. “With BPO? Or the Lacuna? Or...”

“Or with each other,” Sun said.

-Undisclosed Location-  
“Are you coming?” Yrsa asked. Behind her, Riley stood, still clutching the pillow.

“Are we?” I asked, quietly.

Riley nodded once in reply. I started walking towards Yrsa again. The elderly woman, our contact at BPO, opened the door to a brightly lit office, wide and spacious, with one desk in the middle. The windows providing the light were heavily frosted— or, more likely, were glow panels. For all I knew, we were underground.

-The Lacuna-  
The clearing in the stone ruins was just as we remembered it; soft daylight filtered through the brush and trees. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t an actual place: this was the Lacuna, and it was wherever the Mother was. She had gained mastery over her psycellium to a degree that she could pull sensates into a virtual world. Even if the sensate in question had never met the Mother. Neets had done some research into what that world was called; some researchers considered it a “mental palace”, while others denied that such a thing was even possible. Again, things aren’t always what they appear.

“Welcome, Riley,” the Mother said. “I know why you are here. I know what you will ask of me.”

-Undisclosed Location-  
“So good to see you again, Riley,” River said, standing up from behind the desk. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“It’s about the attack in Korea,” I said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but we need help.”

-The Lacuna-  
“So I am told,” the Mother said. “Riley. Are you asking this of your own will?”

Riley looked straight at the Mother. “Yes. Though it is because of circumstances that I’d rather weren’t so urgent.”

The Mother smiled. She had been a bit off-putting when we first met her— after rescuing Wolfgang and bringing him back to Rajan’s place— but she had made it clear to us that she was no threat, as long as we were no threat. Bodhi, on the other hand.... nevermind. “As you say. If we do this, what does the Lacuna gain?”

-Undisclosed Location-  
“I see,” River said, sitting down. Yrsa stood by her side; without her, we wouldn’t be able to communicate with River. “News of it had reached us through the Archipelago as well. You believe there is a credible threat on Ms. Bak’s life?”

“Joong-ki will not stop until Sun is dead,” I said. “He tried to kill her twice before. He knows it’s either him or her. Us.”

“Joong-ki is dangerous,” Sun added. “Not just to me. Many other people know of his crimes. He will silence them.”

“Shouldn’t we let the police handle this?” Yrsa said. “It’s a matter for sapiens. No offense, Madame Chairman.”

-The Lacuna-  
“None taken,” I replied. “You know what we’re really doing.”

“I do at that, Nomi,” the Mother said evenly. “You wish us to join forces with BPO. This we cannot allow.”

“I’m not suggesting you join up,” I said. “You need an adapter. A go-between. We’re it.”

“We act as double agents,” Will said. “We work for BPO and for the Lacuna. Passing information through both sides when we need to.”

“It is not that simple, Will,” the Mother replied.

-Undisclosed Location-  
“Our resources are not what they were,” River sighed. “Frankly, we need you more than you need us.”

“You’re wrong,” Wolfgang said. “You have something we desperately need. Authority.”

“A BPO badge can still open more doors than you realize,” Will said. “And if we’re going to stop Joong-ki before he hurts more people, we need those doors opened.”

“But can you stop him?” Yrsa asked flatly. “You have failed twice before. What promise do we have that you will succeed?”

“We have no choice but to succeed,” Capheus said. “Sixteen people are dead because of him. Countless more will follow if we do nothing.”

-The Lacuna-  
“Nothing,” the Mother replied. “We ask nothing of your cluster in return. We do not need BPO.”

“Then what does the Lacuna gain?” Kala asked.

“Me,” Riley said. “They get me.”

\---

-San Francisco, United States-  
“Whoa,” I said. “What do you mean, they ‘get you’?”

“Losing you is not an option,” Will growled. Instantly the other five started shouting protests and questions. 

Riley held up a hand, her sleeve flopping down from her wrist. “It’s not like that,” she said. “The Mother wants to... teach me things.”

“Like what?” Kala asked.

“How clusters are born, for starters,” Riley said. “How to find sensates without hurting them. Things that only the Lacuna knows how to do.”

I frowned. Certainly, we needed the information that the Lacuna could provide for us. And definitely we needed to get BPO on board with our hunt for Joong-ki. But to couple those together seemed... wrong, to me. I can’t explain why. I just had the strangest feeling that if we gave up Riley— gave her up again— we might never get her back. That would crush us all. It might kill Will. It simply wasn’t an option.

“How much do you trust the Mother?” Kala asked. “She has never been what we would call forthcoming.”

“I don’t trust her,” Riley said. “But I believe her.”

“This makes no sense,” Lito said. “Riley. You cannot put yourself in danger like this. Not for BPO. Not for... for that worm Joong-ki.”

“I agree,” Capheus said. “Working as go-betweens was the bargain. This is not.”

Will held up his hand. “I don’t know if we have all of the information about this, but what we do know means that we need some additional leverage on this one. If the Mother takes one of ours, we take one of hers.”

I blinked. “Bodhi,” I said. “She could be our Theon Greyjoy.” Wolfgang gave me a look. “I liked the books better,” I shrugged.

“A hostage?” Kala said. “This seems a bit extreme.”

“But it could work,” Sun said thoughtfully. “Collateral. A good incentive to keep Riley safe.”

“That solves one side,” Wolfgang said. “What about BPO?”

“We don’t know that any sensates are involved,” Capheus said. “But, we also don’t know that they aren’t involved. So, we should have the benefit of the doubt, since Sun is being targeted.”

“But we don’t know that Sun is being targeted!” Lito shouted. Kala and Capheus quickly covered his mouth to calm him down somewhat. It never worked, but it was helpful to make the effort. “Yes, Joong-ki is a threat. But he is not an immediate threat. We have time.”

“We’re forgetting something,” I said. “Dresden.”

“The wizard?” Lito asked.

“Yeah. We don’t know what his deal is. He might be a sensate, just of a kind we don’t understand yet,” I said, glancing at Riley. “In that case, we would need both the Lacuna and BPO to figure him out.”

“What if he is a threat?” Wolfgang asked.

“I don’t see it,” Will said, shaking his head. “He’s a weirdo, but Sergeant Murphy vouched for him. Besides, he’s caught his share of bad guys. I think he’s on the level.”

“This could work,” Sun said. “We keep Bodhi to get the Lacuna’s cooperation, and we research Dresden to gain BPO’s.”

“But we are still sending Riley into danger,” Lito said. “I don’t like it.”

“Lito,” Riley said. “The Mother has never been unkind to me. She has always been honest, if not fully so at first. I am not going into danger.”

“She’s a big girl, Lito,” I said, smiling. “She can take care of herself for a while.”

I never understood Lito very well, but it was times like these where I could at least get a sense of where he was coming from. It’s true that we were close— certainly not as close as Will and Riley— but like siblings, more than anything else. I’ll always have his back, and he’ll always have mine. But that doesn’t mean we don’t fight like hell every once in a while, too. Even still, I knew what was driving Lito’s possessiveness here. Riley is family. We both wanted to keep her safe, because we both knew just what family was. How strong a bond it could be, and how fragile it was.

A horrible memory jumped into my brain. I was strapped to a gurney in the hospital, a couple years back, about to be taken into surgery for an involuntary lobotomy. My mother had become convinced by a hack doctor named Metzger and some manipulations of Whispers’ that I was losing my mind. The truth was that Metzger and Brandt were going to take my mind from me; to turn me into a remote control assassin. I remembered the awful feeling of betrayal as the extremely heavy sedatives started to work. My family, the last people you ever expect to turn on you, had done just that. Maybe not knowingly, but I was going to die and they were never going to know how horrible it would have been.

And then, just before I blacked out, I heard a song start to play in the back of my mind. Riley’s song. Wolfgang’s song. Our song. And I smelled the familiar rosewood and cinnamon perfume that Amanita loves, as a nurse in dreadlocks and a face mask pushed my gurney away from the operating theater and out to freedom.

“And if she can’t?” Lito asked.

I smiled. “Then her family will just have to go get her,” I said. “Won’t we?”

-The Lacuna-  
“Can we be assured that Bodhi will be returned to us unharmed?” the Mother asked. 

“You have as much a guarantee of that as we do that Riley will be unharmed,” Wolfgang said. “One for one. It’s our offer.”

“I will do it,” Bodhi said. “If it is the Lacuna’s will.”

“You too have a choice in this, child,” the Mother said to her. Bodhi was considered the heir-apparent to the Lacuna; she would be the one to take on the role of the Mother once the current one stepped down or died. That much we knew about the workings of the Lacuna. Everything else was as vague and opaque as the third Matrix movie.

“Yes, and I choose to go,” Bodhi replied. “To ensure that they do not cause trouble.”

“Trouble is what we’re good at,” Will nodded. “Do we have a deal?”

-Undisclosed Location-  
“I see,” River said. “You are sure that this... wizard is not a sensate?”

“He froze straight tequila,” Capheus said. “It was wild.”

“It was mezcal,” Lito mumbled.

“Whatever,” Capheus said. “Whatever Dresden is, I bet you want to know more. So do we.”

Yrsa frowned. “This does not seem fruitful. As I recall, you believed in the Little People for a long time, Riley.” That was a cheap shot. Yrsa had been the one to put that belief in Riley’s head to begin with. “What if you are being deceived?”

“Then I will know that,” Riley said evenly. “And so will you.”

“Dresden is an interesting aside,” River said, “but the real concern is the murders in Korea. Very well. We will arrange for credentials to be delivered to you all as soon as possible.”

“I can get us to Korea in a few hours once we have the badges,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” River said. 

“Wait,” Yrsa interrupted. “Where is Riley?”

-The Lacuna-  
“Bring her back!” Will shouted.

“This was the bargain,” the Mother said. “Bodhi will meet you in Korea. Go now.”

-San Francisco, United States-  
I was alone in my chair. Not alone in my apartment, Amanita was dozing off next to me, but my cluster was gone. Whatever the Mother had done, she had dismissed us pretty firmly. One by one, the rest of my cluster walked in, slowly.

Except Riley. I tried reaching for her, tried to pull her gently towards me, but it was like she was made of smoke. Not like the hard crash of a disconnect while on blockers (and oh god do I not miss blockers). Whatever the Mother had done, she had made good on her promise of taking Riley from us and giving us Bodhi.

“So,” I said, glancing around. “First class tickets again?”


	5. Glad to Collaborate

On a good day, I don’t like “Gentleman” John Marcone. He’s been the kingpin of Chicago’s criminal element for as long as I’ve lived here. Despite his nickname, he’s probably the single most dangerous “vanilla” mortal in the city— and given that he employs a literal Valkyrie and has signed on to the Unseelie Accords as a free-holding lord, the word “vanilla” doesn’t really seem applicable anymore. He’s scum. He’s always been scum, and he always will be scum. And on a good day, my path never crosses his.

Today was not a good day. I found myself waiting patiently at an elevator door, hoping against hope that I hadn’t hexed it yet. Marcone tends to bring out my most destructive impulses, and with that my natural ability to futz with gizmos just by being nearby is similarly amplified. Normally, I wouldn’t care at all how many of Johnny’s toys I had to break to get to him. But since he had something I needed— or I thought he did— I had to play nice.

The elevator dinged, a distorted, pained facsimile of a chiming bell, and as the door opened I was face-to-face with Marcone’s hired Neanderthal, Hendricks. If my dislike for Marcone was a nickel, Hendricks’s dislike for me was at least a Hamilton. Fortunately, my dislike for Hendricks rated a Benjamin, so in that regard, we both knew where we stood. “Dresden,” he growled. “Mister Marcone will see you now.” He swept his hand in towards the elevator.

“Sure thing, pal,” I said, stepping briskly inside. “You might want to get off here. I had some real bad Taco B—”

“I ain’t going anywhere,” Hendricks said, jabbing the “close door” button with one baseball-bat-sized thumb. “Boss says to keep an eye on you.”

“What?” I said, raising my hands in mock indignation. “He doesn’t trust me? I’m wounded. Wounded, I say.”

“Not yet,” Hendricks said. It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out which part of my sass he was replying to. “Besides. You haven’t broken anything yet.”

“‘Yet’, he says,” I mumbled, half to myself. “I can behave myself when I feel like it, you know.”

“Feel like it,” Hendricks said. “Or else.” See, now this is how I knew he was scared of me. Hendricks is barely polysyllabic, let alone this chatty. If he’s anything like me, he talks when he’s spooked. And apparently, my ‘play nice’ shtick had him petrified. I allowed myself a small smile.

The elevator opened again, this time on a very wide hallway. At the end of the hall, two armed guards stood with long guns shouldered and aimed at the elevator. The door they were on either side of was open, and I saw the back of Sigrun Gard, Marcone’s personal assistant, blocking the view of anyone else inside. Odd. She wouldn’t have her back to an open door unless she was absolutely positive no harm could come to her from it. That would be because she was a Valkyrie. Like I said, not really vanilla.

“Is this any way to greet an old friend?” I asked, hands still up. “I’m here to ask a favor of the Godfather. Keep up this unfriendliness and I might have to ask elsewhere.”

Hendricks shoved me into the hallway, where I noticed that there were two other guards on this end, too. They both looked at Hendricks for a long beat before they lowered their rifles away from my ear canals. “Glad I cleaned in there,” I mumbled. Hendricks prodded me in the back again, and I started walking— marching, really, with my hands behind my head— towards the office.

“Mister Dresden,” Gard said, turning around and frowning. Without sounding too thirsty— is that how folks are referring to it? Thirsty?— Gard was one hell of a drink of water. Tall, blonde, and… Wagnerian in her build, more or less exactly what you’d expect of a literal daughter of Odin. “I thank you for your discretion today.”

“Day’s not over yet, Sigrun,” I said, grinning as wide as I could. “Might be some fun later on. You know, going to the batting cages. Go karts. That sort of thing.”

“I doubt you came here to invite us for some… frolic,” she said, stepping to the side as Hendricks continued herding me like I was a head of cattle. “I also doubt you came here willingly.”

“Now, now, Miss Gard,” Marcone said, from behind his desk. John Marcone was not a physically imposing man— not anymore. Life at the top had been good to him. He wore a perfectly tailored navy blue suit, and a simple black necktie. His hair was streaked through with veins of white, owing to the fact that he’d been on top for so long. Beneath it, his face had a few more wrinkles here and there. Time is the only threat that means anything to Marcone anymore. I knew that, and it hadn’t taken a look into his eyes the color of worn dollar bills. Funny. They seemed a little more washed out than the last time I’d met him. “Mister Dresden has come here quite peaceably. Which, I admit, is a surprise. I would only conjecture that this is because you need something that only I can provide.”

“Not true, Johnny,” I said. He didn’t like using the diminutive of his name anymore, either, and he knew I knew that, too. “I could talk to any two-bit drug thug for this. But you are my favorite drug thug, and so I know you’ll help me out.”

“Ah,” Marcone said. “I assume that you are not asking about a sample.”

“That’s why we don’t assume, Marcone,” I said. “It makes an ass out of you.”

“‘And me’.” Wow, he really fell for it.

“Yeah, just you,” I said, grinning. “Let’s cut the crap. I have a reason for coming here and I don’t want to stick around any longer than is necessary. I figure you don’t want me here terribly long either.”

“This intrigues me, Dresden,” Marcone said, leaning forward. “You and I famously do not get along, and yet, you have come to me to ask about… drugs? I admit that it is mere curiosity which is preventing me from having Hendricks throw you out of the hole you blew to get in here.”

“Ah ah,” I said. “I’m playing nice today. No hole.” Marcone pointed to his left, and that’s when I noticed that there was a plastic sheet taped up over a section of wall by the window. Daylight shone through both. “Oh. That hole.”

“Yes,” Marcone said, smiling. “So, as you said, cut the crap.”

“What do you remember about a street drug from a few years back called ThreeEye?”

Marcone’s eyebrows shot up. “Sells? That ThreeEye?”

“Yeah.” This was odd. He seemed somewhat… I don’t know, desperate? It was always hard to get a read on him. “Rings a bell, huh?”

“It does indeed,” Marcone said, his composure returning in a heartbeat. “Rather dreadful stuff. As I recall it required some unfortunate ingredients to produce, yes?”

“I, uh, don’t remember.” That was true. Bob had been able to tell what the stuff was just by being near it, and how to make it. When I’d asked him, he had said that I really didn’t want to try making more, and didn’t explain why. “I think so.”

“It may surprise you, Dresden,” Marcone said, “to know that my organization has been looking to develop a derivative of it. Some of the most horrible drugs can also be used as medicines.”

“Like cocaine,” I growled. “Or ketamine.”

“Just so,” Marcone said. “It may also surprise you to know that illicit sales of both of those substances are dramatically down.”

“The opioid crisis in action, huh?” I said. “Let me guess: you’re looking for the next big thing to peddle.”

“Perish the thought, Dresden,” Marcone said. “ThreeEye was monstrous. It has no place in this world. Why are you asking about it?”

“I, uh.” This shouldn’t be that hard. “I want some.”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Gard shouted.

“Not yet,” I said. “Look, a case came up where I might have need of some of its effects,” I added, quickly. “I’d need a sample to analyze, myself.”

Marcone just smiled. “Of course. We have a nearly identical formula already prepared.”

“Now I don’t— uh.” That was surprising. “You do?”

“I would be glad to collaborate with you on this, Dresden.” Marcone leaned back in his chair. “There is, of course, one condition.”

“You get exclusive rights to it? So you can sell it?” I asked.

“You will be asked to share your results, yes, but I can assure you that there will be zero sales of the resulting drug. This is being used for a very specific purpose, for a very specific patient. You understand, yes?”

“And who is the patient?” I asked, before I realized the answer. Marcone just continued smiling. Marcone was the answer.

—

Even before he had consolidated his grip on pretty much everything illegal and organized (in that order) in Chicago, John Marcone had been a dangerous man. It only got worse once he started to get clued into the truth of the supernatural world. And once he actively started participating in said supernatural world— as a freeholding lord under the Unseelie Accords— he became far more than I could really take down by myself. I honestly doubt that the whole freaking White Council could take him down, when the day comes.

You’d never get me to admit it to the man, though. I have always had Marcone on my to-do list sooner or later, and quite frankly, he’s an improvement over what was going on before. Say what you will about being the one on Chicago’s Iron Throne, but the man runs a tight ship, and has actually driven down violent crime since he took power. I couldn’t fault him for what he’s done. Just how he’s done it. And boy, do I fault him for that.

So when someone who’s already punching way, way above his weight class starts looking into developing a drug that might— might— be used in such a way to temporarily give him access to genuine magic, I get worried. And property values plummet. The construction companies get rich, but it turns out Marcone’s got his fingers in there, too. So, yeah. Not exactly something I want to work on.

But dammit, I might need to. My options were really limited— I certainly couldn’t go to the White Council with this. What’s worse, I was on the clock. I had absolutely no idea what kind of a timeframe Mab had for getting me to Korea, but if I knew the Sidhe, whatever it was would be not nearly enough. I needed the sample, and Marcone had it. If I asked at the Council, it would be edging ever so close to mind-altering magic, as in one of the Laws thereof. And I was already in enough hot water for taking on this moonlighting thing with Mab. If I set foot in Edinburgh there was a good chance that I would not be coming out with the same number of neck accessories as I came in with.

Something nagged at me, though. Marcone had to be working with someone else to even get this far along with a prototype formula of ThreePointOneEye. And his options were just as limited as mine. He could either make a deal with the Sidhe— Winter or Summer, take your pick— or risk working with a warlock, which the White Council would not particularly care much for either. Or perhaps…

“Marcone,” I said, my voice dry and raspy with apprehension. “You didn’t happen to strike a deal with the White Court, did you?”

Marcone just smiled wider. Hell’s bells, he was working with the vampires. Of the two remaining courts of vampires, the White Court was the literal lesser of two very bad evils. While the Black Court are your traditional blood suckers, the White Court feeds off of emotions. Most of them prefer certain very, very strong emotions. Intimate emotions. The kind of emotions that require two or more people to properly create.

I know this because my brother, Thomas, is one of them. It’s a long story. And anyway, as far as I can tell, he’s on the wagon again. I don’t really know. I don’t leave Demonreach often, and Thomas is always away on business when I get off.

….off the island. Not…. Okay, moving on.

“You’re playing with fire here, Marcone,” I said, my voice losing all humor. “These are ancient beings and they can plan on the scale of decades. I bet your planner only goes till December. You are outmatched here.”

“As I recall,” Marcone said evenly, “fire is what you play with on a regular basis. I would think that you would be wise to share such a marvelous toy, Dresden.”

“Glass houses,” I said. “Look. If I’m telling you this, don’t think it’s out of the goodness of my heart, or that I like you or anything. I still want to see you buried underneath Wrigley. I just don’t want the vampires to beat me to it.” Practically, I didn’t want the vampires to turn him, either. The last thing Chicago needs is an immortal crime lord, Marcone or not.

“The Chicago way, I see,” Marcone said. “I trust you understand the results I expect from our cooperation, and what singular use they could be put to.”

“Power,” I said. “Just another gun.”

“Defense,” Marcone replied. “A shield. I am not ignorant of the danger posed by collaborating with Ms. Raith. Nor am I unaware of the difficulties that eliminating the White Court would require. I do not want this for what it could be used to do, Dresden.” He leaned forward. “I want it so that it cannot be used against me.”

So that’s his game. Just like the fake vault, the staged heist to get me into Hades’ vault. He’s not looking to get into supernatural arms trading, he’s trying to build Reagan’s Star Wars, but for magical weaponry. But, Marcone always has two birds he aims at with the single stone. I’m only seeing the one, the one that… he told me…

Hell’s bells. This just got worse. I have absolutely no idea what he wants this for, but defense is only his cover story. I cannot believe for a moment that John Marcone has gone all Al Capone and started looking out for the schoolkids’ milk. There’s something else here. Something that, despite my better judgment, will have to wait until I get back.

“Do you want the sample or not?” Marcone said.

—

True enough to his word, the little silver vial that Marcone had produced was very close to ThreeEye in its composition. It didn’t take Bob to figure that out, just a few quick spells to test it against known effects. But he was also correct in that it was missing one fundamental ingredient.

The original formulation of ThreeEye had required a ritual sacrifice to power the drug at its full potency. That meant either blood, or a soul. I figured that Marcone had probably already tried blood— maybe from some poor dumb banger from the East Coast who didn’t know all the rules around here. So, a soul. Or some fraction thereof.

A year or so back, when I had been working for a literal archangel, I was given the gift of Soulfire. Soulfire was a conduit for the fires of creation, the reaction that was used to start the Big Bang. When applied to the craft of magic, it was basically a turbocharger. With Soulfire, my flames burned hotter than hellfire. (I checked.) My ice was far faster and thicker. (I checked that, too. Most guys do.) The drawback was obvious: where hellfire was a ‘gift’ with ‘no strings attached’, quotes intentional, Soulfire was doled out only so far as my actual soul could be stretched. Use it too much, and goodbye soul.

Of course, my soul was considered a renewable resource as long as I had the ability to rest and recover. And I had become remarkably proficient at not using too much Soulfire when I chose to employ it. So, really, this was a risk I was willing to take. I didn’t think that there would be any real downside to it.

I concentrated my will into my arms and hands, holding the silver vial in both of them, clasped tightly. If this was going to work, I had only one shot, and I wasn’t about to let some of the very very small part of my soul I was giving up— loaning, dammit— escape. I called up the Soulfire and pushed it gently into the fluid.

The change was instant and dramatic. One moment the ThreeEyeColdAndSinus was a thin translucent green; the next it was a viscous, syrupy purple shot. I was in business.

I was also running late. There was no time to test it, no time to double-check all of the verification spells. I felt reasonably confident that it would work as intended, though. You don’t get to put your actual soul in something and not know a little bit about it. I divided the drug into two equal doses, poured my half into an old miniature bottle of Jager, and put the silver vial into my pocket.

Getting from Demonreach to Marcone’s again was tricky, but I managed it. The receptionist said he’d gone home for the night, which I had hoped would be the case. I left the vial with her and gave her instructions that nobody but Marcone was to see it, not even Hendricks or Gard. I then hurried to the back alley that was my most frequent entrance into the Ways— the hyperlanes through the Nevernever that allowed those with the know-how to go anywhere in the world in just a few steps. The red gem in my pentacle was my know-how. It was a gift from my mother, who had made it her life’s work to chart the Ways. It was no intellectus, but it was close enough to be worth having around. Without giving too much thought as to what was on the other side of the veil between worlds, I murmured “Aparturum,” and stepped out of reality.


	6. Top Off

-Nairobi, Kenya-

Capheus' home was the one most in daylight during my flight, so we met up there to discuss our options. Nomi had fallen asleep on the couch and was drifting in and out, but the other six of us were mostly awake and conscious. Six out of seven.

Seven of us left. Losing Riley, even temporarily, hurt. We hadn't felt this way since Wolfgang's kidnapping a year ago. Lost, hurt, angry… but with resolve. That had led directly to the end of BPO. And, I had to admit, it also led to me being able to beat the shit out of Milton Brandt. Which was a nice change of pace from the mind-game torture he had inflicted on me for the whole year beforehand. 

Still, we were seven again. It didn't feel right. Lito had been the first to describe in words the feeling of absence that Riley's stay with the Lacuna was causing. We could feel that she was still there, still somewhere in the world, but to reach for her was impossible. Like when you're in a dream, and you're trying to grasp at something, but the sleep paralysis makes it feel like you weigh fifteen tons. 

-Flight 851-

Nomi was dozing in the seat two rows ahead. We were the only two in first class for the overnight flight to Seoul, and of our cluster only Wolfgang would be actually meeting us in Korea. Capheus and Kala had business obligations that required their physical presence, and Lito was filming on location in Los Angeles. Sun, obviously, was already in Seoul, having taken the express train from Busan.

"Where should we start?" Sun said, from the seat across the aisle from me. 

"If it were me," I said, "I'd want to look at the forensic photos and see if there are any identifying marks linking the victims."

"Can Detective Mun get those for us?" Lito asked.

"Doubtful." I shook my head. "We don't have jurisdiction."

"Can we get them from Detective Mun?" Wolfgang said, grinning. 

"I do not think he has that safe under his desk anymore," Sun said. "I also do not think that he would have access to the files anyway."

"So, we'd have to get them electronically," Kala said. "When Nomi wakes up I'll ask her."

"Next, access to the crime scene," I said.

"Not a problem," Capheus said. "We can use the same police van from last time."

"And the security checkpoints?" Lito shot back.

"That's where these come in," I said, lifting the crisp plastic identification card from the tray table in front of me. It was a full-fledged BPO badge, and Yrsa had said that it would be activated with unlimited clearance. "Will the local law let us through?"

"I can check," Sun said. "We may need a local escort."

"Fine by me," Wolfgang said. Sun raised an eyebrow. "I like him too, you know."

"So that just leaves us with…"

"The Archipelago," Kala said. "Who is active there right now?"

-Nairobi, Kenya-

"I would have to look around," Capheus said. "Give me a moment." He stepped out his front door. Capheus had been our second most common link to the Archipelago, after Riley. His contacts in the political world of Kenya gave him the opportunity to connect with other sensates in person. Locking eyes with another sensate, face to face, creates a link between them, allowing them to Visit, but not Share. By chaining these links together, sensates have an informal whisper network: the Archipelago. 

Unlike the Lacuna, however, our cooperation with the Archipelago has always been free and open. They were among the first to trust us during the BPO crisis. One person in particular, calling himself The Old Man of Hoy, had taken an instant liking to Riley— and the rest of us, too, once we met him at Nomi's wedding in Paris. It was very mutual. Though his accent is a little rough. And it's the damnedest thing, but he swears. Like, a lot. Worse than Wolfgang.

"Do you think we're getting in too deep?" Lito asked me. "We have a track record of getting in trouble."

"Can't play it safe this time," I said, regretfully. "Sun needs us."

"I can take care of myself," Sun said, her eyes closed. She was sitting cross-legged on a carpet in the middle of the room. "But I thank you for your concern."

"Joong-ki is a threat," I repeated. "And if he's gone completely Hannibal Lecter, that's a risk I won't take."

"Yes, but Lecter won," Lito said. "In the end, anyway. We beat the Cannibal once. Joong-ki is far worse."

"I doubt that," Wolfgang said coolly. 

"Which part?"

"Both," he replied. "We don't know that we beat Whispers; we'll never know for sure. But Joong-ki is not worse than him. He's only human. We can take him."

"But Joong-ki has targeted innocents!" Lito hissed. "He's a danger to everyone in Korea, and with how he killed those people..."

"So you admit he is a danger," Kala said.

"Of course he is," Lito replied. "But there are ways to deal with him besides a direct fight."

"Not many," Capheus said, coming back into the room.

-Flight 851-

Capheus took a seat on my left. "The Archipelago hasn't seen him in 24 hours. The last we saw of him was in his cell in Pohang."

"So we don't know how he escaped, and we don't know how those people died," Kala said, sipping tea. "This is most troublesome."

"Look," I said, "we have got to do this. There's nothing else to be said. Joong-ki is our responsibility."

"My responsibility," Sun said quietly. "Don't I have a say in this?"

I blinked. "Okay," I said. "You should probably take the lead on this, then."

-Busan, South Korea-

I stood up from my office chair, looking Will in the eye. "Are you sure?"

"You're the one with the most to lose if this goes wrong," Will replied. "This is your show now, Sun."

I smiled, just a little. The boys like it when I smile. "Then we proceed," I said. "Lito. You have a good point in that a direct confrontation with Joong-ki is not wise. But we have to keep ourselves open to the idea that it may be necessary." He frowned, but nodded once. "Thank you for your concern."

"So what's our first move on the ground?" Wolfgang said.

"I'm curious about that too," a new voice said. I turned to my right, and saw Bodhi standing in the doorway to my office.

—

I can see how some people might have been intimidated by a woman like Bodhi. She made a great show of being enigmatic, of being one of those kinds of people who looks like she has all of the answers but will share none of them with you. She was striking in her appearance. Bald looked good on her. The bodhi tree tattoo on the back of her head took some of the asceticism out of her appearance, but other than that she looked like the model monk.

I have a strong distaste for monks. Perhaps it stems from the funeral for my mother, where the Buddhist monks performed the service alongside the Catholic priests. It was irrational, I know. But the association is there. And it is not something I can easily dismiss. 

Bodhi herself was not among my favorite people, either, but for many reasons not related to her monastic lifestyle. The first of which was that she had taken one of our cluster from us. The second of which was that while in prison, I had decided I had quite my fill of snotty, self-righteous women who think they have something to prove. The third was that I just plain didn't like her.

As I said. Irrational. But not ignorable.

"You will be meeting us in Seoul," I said, less of a question and more as a statement of fact. "I believe you are already here."

"Just landing," Bodhi said. "I was in the area." That did not sound particularly truthful. "Once we are in Seoul?"

"We will assess then," I said. I made a sweeping gesture towards a chair on the other side of my desk, and Bodhi graciously stepped in. She was dressed very differently than when we had last seen her, in Paris. She was wearing a saffron-colored hoodie, faded black jeans, and sneakers that looked perhaps three steps away from completely disintegrating. She also had a baseball cap on, which looked unusually new compared to the rest of her clothing. 

Bodhi sat down, and I did as well. "Nice office," she remarked.

"Thank you," I said. "You'll forgive me if I don't offer you my business card."

"Or coffee," she added, smirking slightly. I glanced behind her to the television, which was still replaying footage of the attack. "But we both know why that is."

"Of course," I said. I pointed to the television. "What do you know about this?"

"Personally, nothing much," Bodhi said. "But as a member of the Lacuna…"

"Even less," I concluded.

"No. Quite the contrary." Her pronunciation was British; or at least it sounded like British-accented Korean to me. God only knows what language she was hearing me in. "All of the victims were sensorium."

That was troubling. "How do you know?"

"We know things," she said, smirking again. "We knew you were a sensate years before you were born. We will know your children, and their children, and those that come after." 

"Then you knew about Whispers," I said.

"We did. But knowledge is a terrible burden, Sun." She leaned forward. "Neutrality was the price we paid for that knowledge."

"Yet," I said, "when the time came to put an end to the corruption, you were the one that convinced the Mother to force the Lacuna's hand."

"Other prices were paid." She looked away, making a show of turning to the television. I don't know why. 

"I cannot Visit you," I said, quietly.

"A gift of the Lacuna," Bodhi said. "The Mother has granted me some protections. I can come to no harm."

Arrogance. Yet another trait of hers that I do not like. "We shall see. Seoul, then."

"Seoul. I will find you." She took off her hat and laid it on my desk. Her head was freshly shaven— so recent that there were cuts on it that had yet to fully heal, the faint lines of minuscule scabs still here and there. Careless and arrogant. Not a good combination. "Be well until then, Sun Bak."

-Flight 851-

"Sun?" Will said, his hand on my shoulder. "You okay?"

I blinked. It was not like me to be taken by surprise. "You heard her?"

"Heard who?" Will said, frowning. "You just spaced out for a minute. What happened? Did someone Visit you?"

I nodded, quietly. "Bodhi. She was in my office," I said, then paused.

-Busan, South Korea-

Bodhi's cap was still on my desk. I reached out, hesitantly, and touched it. It appeared to be real. I picked it up gingerly, and with a quick motion flung it as hard as I could at the door to my washroom. It made a hollow "thump" as it bounced off, pushing the door open a few centimeters.

-Flight 831-

"We may have a problem with Bodhi," I said.

—

"But if she was Visiting," Kala said, "how could she have left the cap there?"

"We know for sure she was Visiting?" Will said. "It feels like what we pulled on Milton."

"The Archipelago had eyes on her in Incheon Airport the entire time," Capheus said. "She went through security, so we know she had to be there in person. She couldn't have been in both places at once."

"It seems to me that there's more to the Lacuna than we were aware of," Wolfgang murmured. "It'd be a neat trick to learn."

"If we can," Will nodded. "I really wish Nomi was awake. She'd be able to pick this apart."

I closed my eyes. Bodhi was not a good replacement for Riley. Where one was open and vibrant, the other was closed and muted. There could not be a greater contrast between two women, I think. Even if we had had our pick of sensates to assist us, I doubt that we could have come close to equaling what we had lost. "We must set this aside for now," I said. "Bodhi is a mystery, but not our primary one. We must stay focused."

Everyone nodded their agreement, even Lito. "Sun," he said. "May I have a word?"

-Rosemead, California, United States-

Lito's home while he was shooting in Hollywood was a modest house in a very quiet suburb of Los Angeles. It was night now in California, and he was seated on the sofa in the main room. To his left, dozing off quietly, was his loved one, Hernando; in the chair opposite the sofa, snoring very loudly, was their companion, Daniela. Lito himself was topless, wearing long board shorts and flip-flops, with the script for his movie open in his lap. The other two were dressed very lightly as well, owing to the humid warmth of the American southwest. 

"Of course," I said. Lito and I got along well enough. Which is to say that we grated on each other at times, but in the end, we had each other's best interests at heart, and so we could be forgiven some minor irritation. And, perhaps, even some major irritation. "Is this about the role?"

"No, no," he said. "Well, a little. But not right now. No, this is about you," he added. "I still think this is a bad idea. I still think that our best move is to get you out of the country."

"And I still intend to stay," I said. I sat down on the edge of the glass coffee table. Since I wasn't actually there, I had little reason to worry about breaking it. "So if this is another—"

"I know, I know," Lito said. "But… Sun, I've lost people in my life." His tone was serious. Far more serious than I had ever heard him, outside of our operations against BPO. "Raoul, for one. My father. Friends. Lovers. People die, Sun. And we are often at the mercy of Santa Muerte when it comes to who, and when, and why." He leaned forward a bit. "But there are times when we are not. When we have the ability to choose for ourselves, to take the safe road. We can defy death."

"Can we?" I asked. "It seems to me that if we evade death now, we will forever be in its shadow. We will always wonder when our cheat will catch up to us."

"It doesn't have to be a cheat," Lito said. "A choice. A simple option. Not to put ourselves in danger for no reason."

"We do have a reason," Sun said. "Joong-ki. My brother."

"The authorities can find him," Lito said. "If you were to leave Korea…"

"It would look suspicious," I said flatly. "The police already do not trust me fully, despite my relationship with Kw— I mean, Detective Mun." It was not like me to let something like that slip out. "If I leave the country, they will assume that I am somehow in league with him. I stay, business as usual, and the suspicion goes away." I smiled. "And, if I stay, it makes it much easier to capture him."

"Are you going to be satisfied with just capturing him?" Lito asked. "Are you going to leave to chance that he won't escape again?"

I admit that, until that moment, I had not fully considered the point that Lito was making. For most of my life, I had lived under the geas placed upon me by someone whom I had lost. It had been my mother's dying wish for me to take care of my brother. In as many words, she had charged me with that duty. For decades, I fought to protect him from himself. From his own worst impulses. From the consequences of his recklessness and perfidy. I had sacrificed so much of myself to replace the parts of him that were rotting away— or, more likely, had never been there to begin with.

And, when the time came for him to repay that duty, that obligation, he had arranged for my death in prison. All of my work, all of my hardship, it had all been completely in vain. In the end, I had to discover— over the grave of my father— just how irredeemable Joong-ki really was. I had to discover the true depths of his moral void. I had to understand that the last command my mother had placed upon her daughter was impossible.

It is one thing to know this. It is another thing entirely to accept it. And, until that moment, in the house in California, listening to the actor whose movies I didn't even like, but who had become to me something closer than even my brother, I had understood without accepting. My teacher would be very disappointed in me if he ever knew.

"No," I said. "Capture is only the first step. Once we know everything that he knows," I continued, "we will take care of him."

"I don't understand," Lito said. "We will hold him?"

"No," I said, my tone almost completely gone. "We will capture him, but then… I will not hesitate this time." Lito frowned. "I will kill Joong-ki. Myself."


	7. International, But Public

Traveling through the Nevernever is, from a strictly utilitarian standpoint, more efficient than travel through normal space simply due to the fact that the Nevernever isn't linearly connected to normal space. If you take three steps in the Nevernever, you could end up on the other side of the planet. My mother's amulet, dented as the silver was, was an invaluable tool for mapping the Ways, but it was working off information from a couple decades ago by this point. Anyone can tell you, outdated maps are close to useless. Which makes my job a lot harder, because do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a paper atlas or street map these days? Everyone has those GPS doohickeys that make funny noises and smoke when I get near them.

All this is to say that I walked into the airport in Incheon (I think?) soaking wet with ocean water. I hunted through the airside gates looking for a men's room with a shower, trying not to attract too much attention. Well, no more attention than a nearly-seven-foot-tall American in a heavy coat making wet schlorpy noises as he walks through a Korean airport would ordinarily make. 

"Excuse me," a man said, trying to get past me. He was blonde, short-ish— not Murphy short, but close— and his accent was tinged with German around the "xc" in his statement. He also looked very familiar and very irritated. "Are you going to let me through?"

"Ah, sorry," I said, stepping aside. 

The blonde German sniffed and looked me up and down. "Du hast in der Kneipe besser ausgesehen," he mumbled. "Tch. Zauberer."

"You got something to say, pal?" I growled. My hand instinctively went to the makeshift blasting rod I'd managed to cobble together.

"Nothing," he said. "Just stay out of my way while I'm here, Dresden, and we'll be fine."

"How do you know my..." The penny dropped. "Wolfgang. You're Wolfgang Bogdanow."

"And I have no time for sorcerers like you," he said. "So piss off."

I looked him straight in the eyes, knowing that there was no chance of a Soulgaze— or at least, thinking that there wouldn't be one. My hunch was right, in that I didn't feel the familiar pull of the gaze starting, but something else happened. I felt myself jump to a theater, watching an old movie, subtitled in German. Arnold Schwarzenegger was bare-chested, swinging a sword almost as tall as he was at James Earl Jones. The movie was familiar to me even without knowing that this was one of Wolfgang's most treasured memories: Conan the Barbarian. I'd seen the film a couple of times myself, usually in cheap midnight showings at the old Lakeview Drive-In before it closed down.

"Or what?" I said, grinning. "You'll go all Cimmerian on my ass?"

For the first time in the conversation, Wolfgang looked surprised. Had he not seen the same memory that I had? Or had he forgotten about the Soulgaze? That last part wasn't possible. You don't forget a Soulgaze. Ever. But what if he had seen the totality of who and what he was, and simply didn't care anymore? What if he had reached a state of complete acceptance with himself such that being presented with it in living 3D Technicolor IMAX whatever was simply no big deal to him? This was getting a little too Beeblebroxian for my tastes.

"Relax, Wolfgang," I said. "I'm not here to start trouble. I'm here on business."

"So am I," he said, regaining his composure. His eyes defocused for a fraction of a second, just long enough for me to notice, and then said, "What kind of business?"

"Faerie court stuff," I said, waving a hand. "Something about a mass murder."

Immediately he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the men's room. "What do you know about it?" he hissed, intensely.

"Whoa, whoa," I said. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say we're working the same case." I paused. "Which makes no sense as vanilla mortals, sensates or not, shouldn't know about a bunch of Winter Court faeries dying."

"There were more than just your fairies," Wolfgang said. "Sixteen people killed. All sensates except one. That one has a connection to one of us."

Sixteen murders? Of humans? Coincidentally near a bunch of faeries that died? Stars and stones. What the hell had Mab gotten me into?

—

I'm not exactly what anyone would call a world traveler. Even with the Ways at my disposal, I was a homebody. And that was before I had unwittingly become the Warden of a magical time-transcending prison of monsters that would make H. R. Giger shit Hieronymous Bosch's pants. I liked Chicago. I liked America, maybe not as much as I liked Chicago, but nowhere else in the world can you get a hot dog that comes with no questions asked on either end. And, despite everything, I'd come to like Demonreach Isle, too. You don't get plugged into an intellectus for a year or two without starting to get a fondness for the place. 

But the bottom line is that, with the exception of the White Council HQ in Edinburgh, I stayed home most of the time. Now, that doesn't mean I'm uncultured. I can quote almost every Road Runner cartoon. And hanging out with an international society of wizards has exposed me to a whole bunch more cultures, each of which has their own name for Wile E. Coyote. Who says pop culture rots your brain? I say it expands your horizons. I knew people from all over the world, even if I didn't want to go visit them at home.

Which didn't prepare me for the fact that, apparently, Germans are not shy about nudity. Like, at all.

I had tried to go into the stall on the other end of the shower room, but Wolfgang insisted that we needed to keep our voices down. Despite, y'know, the fact that we would be speaking English in Korea, and the odds of being overheard were damn close to zero. My protestations that the stalls were separated by thin translucent plastic went completely unheard, though. It wasn't until I tried, very pointedly, to pull the curtain between our stalls that I noticed that the curtain was falling off of the hooks. Sorry, that's a bit too generous. The curtain was falling off the hooks because the hooks were falling apart.

"Are you quite done?" Wolfgang hissed as I fumbled with the plastic curtain, now slick with soap suds.

"Just talk," I said, salvaging what dignity I could.

"Okay." I wasn't looking at him but I could practically hear his eyes roll. "Tae Park is a— was— a high-level politician here in Korea," he said, scrubbing away blithely. "He was the only non-sensate killed the other night. He also was the guy responsible for keeping Joong-ki Bak out of prison for so long."

"Bak," I said. "Sun?"

"Her brother," he replied, bitterly. "He tried to kill her. Several times."

"Someone tries to kill you," I said, "you try to kill them right back. Did you?"

"We tried, yeah," Wolfgang said. "Came close, too. But he got away from us."

"Thanks to this Park fellow," I finished.

"Because I—" Wolfgang started, then stopped. "Yeah. Park."

"And now Park is dead, and Joong-ki?"

"In the wind. We have no leads." He looked at me for a moment. "Aren't you going to wash up?"

"Working on doing that," I said, waving away his concern before quickly smashing my hand back down to keep the plastic covering my magic stick. "Keep talking. Why rush to Korea if you have no leads?"

"Protection," he replied, and again I heard his eyes roll. I swear I heard it. They made this sound like a safe's dial. I don't know how he did it. "Joong-ki might be coming after Sun. We need to keep her safe."

"And settle the score," I said. "Don't give me that look," I added. "It's all in your voice. You want him dead. Badly."

Wolfgang looked at me with an expression somewhere between mild admiration and complete astonishment. "How did you...?"

"Detective," I shrugged. "Look, can we please go somewhere and talk like normal civilized people who don't have important conversations while naked?"

The safe's dial clicked a little bit longer. "Zauberer. Amerikaner."

"Damn straight, barbarian."

—

Wolfgang didn't have much else to add to the situation that I hadn't already seared into my brain alongside the memories of his very naked body. Seriously, where's a shadow of a fallen angel when you really need them? Still, we exchanged where we were staying for the time being, and after a very tense coffee at the landside cafe where we both made extremely pointed efforts not to look each other in the eye, I left to try to find my contact in the White Council. 

I was honestly surprised to see Carlos Ramirez, lately the Warden of Los Angeles, stroll up to me. "Buenos dias, jefe," he said, grinning. Ramirez was a good kid with brains and the magical brawn to back it up. Like me, he'd seen his fair share of the worst parts of the war with the Red Court. Also like me, he was too young to have been made a Warden; when I say he's a good kid, emphasize the "kid". Still, nobody I'd rather have by my side. "Funny seeing you here."

I shook his proffered hand, and pulled him into a manly hug. "It's just how things go when you're an international private dick," I said, grinning.

"You know, that's where you and I are different," he said. "My dick is international, but public." Kid. With the kid sense of sexual invulnerability. Or at least, that's what he was trying to project. "Seriously, though, this is weird. I'm only here temporarily to cover for Warden Kim, and you show up. Mixed up orders?"

"Seriously, I'm here for a client," I said. "Wait. What happened to Jae-K?"

"You didn't hear? He died a couple days ago." Carlos' expression was grim. "Hunting a warlock, going by the last of his notes."

"I'm going to want a look at those," I said. "I think we might be on the same track."

"Well, whatever track you're on, get off it, fast," he said, leveling his gaze at me. "This is bad news, jefe. That warlock just killed—"

"Sixteen people," I said. "Yeah. Same track. Not getting off." I paused, waiting for the inevitable snickering, which didn't come. Damn. That was a slow pitch and Ramirez just watched it go by. "Serious?"

"Serious, Dresden." He handed me a small notebook. "Here's the notes, but unless you can read Korean, they're not gonna do you much good. We had them transcribed but, you know how it is, they're on a computer, and..."

"And you fried the doohickey they gave you," I finished. "Okay. So what's your next move?"

"My next move?" Ramirez said. "My next move is to go back to that bibimbap place and get takeout, then chill in my room till Edinburgh calls and tells me to go home. You should think about doing the same."

"You're not investigating this?"

"And get my cojones exploded like those sixteen other guys? No way." He grimaced. "This isn't my turf. Last I checked it isn't yours, either. Keep your head down, Harry."

"Keep yours covered, Carlos," I said. We exchanged our hotel information and I gave him another hug. "Say hi to Molly the next time you see her," I said.

There was just a brief flash of pain that went across his face as he reacted to the statement, but it disappeared almost as quickly as it had betrayed him. Something clearly had happened between them— something he was still healing from. She probably dumped him. Whatever it was, he'll get over it. He always does. "She's a handful."

"'Course she is," I grinned. "I trained her."

"Oh yeah?" he said, smiling. "Is that where she learned the trick with the flute and the peanut butter?"

For the second time that day I sincerely wished I still had Lash kicking around my brain to help me un-see things.

—

Carlos was right about one thing, I had to admit. Warden Jae-kyung Kim's notebook was written in tiny Korean script that I simply couldn't read. Every once in a while there would be some Greek alphabet thrown in, which is what I can only assume was the language of his magic, but that made knowing the Greek practically worthless. See, magic is about tying power to will, and one way to do that is with words. Most wizards tend to use foreign languages for that, because you don't want to be at a Bulls game, see a few three-pointers, shout "He's on fire!", and incinerate the cheap seats when your power goes out of control. So you tie the lance of fire to the word "fuego" instead, and now you have something that sounds cooler when you shout it in a panic as you run from whatever's trying to eat you. Molly, my former apprentice (and apparently Carlos's current ex), used Japanese. I did the thing that English does anyway, and just pulled random words from wherever. 

So what did I know now that I didn't know before I came to Korea? Aside from the fact that Jae-K's handwriting was as bad as mine and that his coffee addiction was significantly worse, not much. Still, the absence of clues can be a clue in itself— it means whoever you're looking for is smart enough to clean up after themselves. Without concrete evidence, I had to extrapolate from what I knew. 

The first thing was that there are apparently three entire groups converging on this problem: the Winter Court, the White Council, and whatever organization of sensates that Wolfgang and his gang belonged to. Wolfgang had done a really poor job of trying to make the thing with Sun sound personal; however, his nonchalant demeanor made his conversation with me feel like he was hiding something else. My guess is that he didn't want to be there, but was being coerced somehow. So, not a stretch to say that he wasn't working for himself. At any rate, that was three groups whose attention that the killer was trying to get, or three groups whose attention they really didn't want to get. But which was it?

The next thing was that there were probably fifteen random victims of the killer, with Tae Park being the intended target. This also suggested that the magic used to kill Park required the life force of those other fifteen. But didn't Wolfgang say that the other fifteen were all sensates? That means that the fifteen others were not random, and that Park was the outlier. So who was the killer's real target— the fifteen, or Park?

And finally, neither Wolfgang nor Ramirez had made any remarks about strange creatures being part of the situation, yet I was here under Mab's orders. The faeries were involved somehow, and I didn't know exactly how, other than my presence. Was it possible that Mab had sent me ahead to stop something that she knew was going to happen to the faeries? No, not possible at all. She said that several of the Winter Court had disappeared. Past tense. Mab couldn't lie. Therefore, I knew everything I could about the situation except what she had explicitly sent me to find out. She wasn't going to be happy about that, but at the same time, I'd only been on the peninsula for a couple hours. I barely had time to get to the hostel and to gather my thoughts.

Of the three things I'd deduced, the easiest one to go forward with was the last one. I had to make contact with a member of the Winter Court here in Korea. Fortunately, like a six-foot-something Foghorn Leghorn, I had come prepared for just such an occasion. During some of my earliest visits to Edinburgh, I had spent a good deal of time in the mythology section of the library. And, in my poorest days in Chicago, I had done the same at several of the public libraries in town. Believe it or not, I learned much more from the Chicago books than the Scotland ones, mostly because the entirety of the text on summoning some of these things was some variation of "don't". I had squirreled away a lot of knowledge about these creatures in a few notebooks in some of my boltholes, which thankfully had survived the destruction of my apartment and lab better than I had.

The problem was that I didn't know if I'd bothered to copy down anything on Korean mythical creatures, or if I did, where in the four very large binders of emergency notes I'd put them. I could almost hear my old mentor, Ebenezer McCoy, saying, "best get to reading, then, boy." He had said that so many times while I was apprenticed to him that I could even hear the exact cadence and inflections in his voice. I'm not sure if I should be proud of that, or ashamed of why I was proud of it.

After a couple hours, I felt like I had condensed the already-condensed information binders into something that was extremely dense. Namely, me. My best bet was to find a haetae, which was a kind of divine protector beast not entirely unlike Mouse back home. Mouse was an honest-to-god Chinese Foo dog, who literally followed me home, and I kept him. At least, until I decided that he needed to protect my daughter. Still, I had the personal vouchsafe of one of these haetae's cousins. What could possibly go wrong? I set out after dark with instructions on how to get to a public park. The guy at the front desk who could speak English was utterly bewildered that I was going to a park at that time of night, to say nothing of the backpack slung across my shoulders and my staff in hand. Still, he got me on my way, and probably called the police immediately afterwards. 

Seoul at night was a very different city than it had been in the daylight. Walking through the quasi-suburb that I called home for the time being to get to the place had left me with a feeling that it wasn't all that different from home, just that the alleys were narrower and there were a lot fewer cars. I'd spent a lot of time helping the Carpenters out at charity events for some of the most in-need of the city, and some of the places where I'd been looked only slightly more run-down than this place. At the same time, though, you could tell that, just like home, the people who lived here felt extraordinary pride in being in Seoul. This was the biggest city in their world, and some of them would never leave the country to visit anywhere else. Some might not even leave the city. As a homebody myself, I understood it.

But walking through the same areas at night, you could hardly tell that this was the low-rent district. There were people milling about everywhere, some singing and joking, others talking; storefronts opened up from what I had assumed to be garage doors, and there were food stands everywhere. And good lord, was the food good. Tasty knows no language barrier. It was brightly lit, well populated, and felt just as much like a home that people would never want to leave as the quiet daytime austerity had. I understood the appeal of the vibrancy, too.

I made it to the park around nine o'clock, just as some of the more reputable businesses were starting to close up for the night. I could tell that they were the reputable ones because the percentage of people who were going into the ones that were left was like 99% dudes. The oldest profession didn't exactly need a whole lot of translation, either. I had the small park mostly to myself, and found a shady spot under a big fir tree to sit down and set up my circle. The February chill blew through the grey cloak I had worn instead of my duster, and involuntarily I shivered just a little bit. The coat had dried as best as it could have in the time since I'd squanched my way out of the Nevernever, but it would have been a liability in this kind of cold. The last thing I needed was pneumonia. 

"You okay out here?" a woman's voice called out. I looked up to find the source of the perfect British English, and found myself staring at an incredibly beautiful Korean woman. She stood a little taller than most of the women I'd seen today, and was as thin as any model. Her casual jeans and hoodie did little to hide her killer figure, and her dark hair was tied behind her in a loose ponytail. 

"Yeah," I stammered, as I got to my feet. "Just a performance art project."

"Your performance art looks an awful lot like magic," she said, smiling. "Like I wouldn't recognize the cloak of the Wardens."

"You've got me at a loss, then, Miss, uh..."

"Choi," she said. "Ji-a Choi. I was looking for Warden Kim, actually."

"Harry Dresden," I said, offering my hand. Ji-a shook it genially, and her hands were impossibly soft and warm. "Warden Kim isn't available, but I am." I paused. "Is this place special to Warden Kim?"

"Surprised you don't know, Warden Dresden," Ji-a said. "This was where he usually hung out. God only knows why. He always told me that if I ever needed him, I should come here."

"Well, seeing as I'm here, and he's not..."

Ji-a laughed gently. "Yes," she said. "I suppose you'll do."


	8. Held Fast

-Seoul, South Korea-

I was surprised by the ringing of my phone as soon as I turned it back on, in the airport. It was a number that I didn’t recognize, and so I ignored it. I’m not in the best physical shape, compared to Will and Capheus, or hell, even compared to Kala. But Will seemed to know where he was going in the airport, so I didn’t think too much of falling behind. Besides, it’s not like I could lose him, or anything.

My phone dinged again, this time a text from Amanita. “PICK UP THE NEXT UNKNOWN NUMBER”. I froze in place. “Will.”

Instantly he was by my side, even though he was still walking towards the baggage claim area. “What the hell?” he asked. The phone started ringing again, and we exchanged a glance. “Better answer it,” he murmured.

“Mrs. Marks,” the voice on the other end of the line said. He was male, calm, and very low. He was also not using any kind of voice filter. That made him arrogant instead of just foolish. “I want you to remain calm and just listen to what I have to say. I would hate to have anything happen to the other Mrs. Marks.”

“You have my mom?” I asked, barely able to speak.

“What? No,” the man said, obviously taken aback. “Your wife. Mrs. Amanita Marks.”

“We hyphenated,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Ah, my mistake,” the man said. “Call me Kincaid. I’ve been hired by a technology firm to see about your recent intrusions into their corporate network.” That last part sounded like he was reading off of a card. He continued after half a moment, this time much more natural and smooth. “And to my great surprise, not only did you skip town, but you fled the country. Very suspicious.”

I swallowed, hard. He was a bounty hunter, obviously. I hadn’t heard of him, but that didn’t mean much. But I knew what getting tagged by him meant, and I knew that he was going to be bad news. This wasn’t the first time I’d had so-called “private law enforcement” put on my trail. The funny thing is that that’s how I met Bug— he was helping me out with an information grab from Virtanen Pharmaceuticals just before they went bust, and when their hired goon came after me, Bug got me to a private doctor in New York. Even in the leg, getting shot sucks. After that, whenever I had someone like this guy following me, I usually tried to cut a deal.

You know the old saying that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? It works like that in the corporate world, too. Usually when these big companies catch you with your hands in their cookie jars, they’re willing to cut deals in order to prevent those dirty secrets from being released. You usually have to show them your backups to prove you’re not socking away the data for later use, but if you double-cross them, they have your info, too, and they can put you in jail. It’s usually safer to just play nice, and having a reputation for being a fair dealer has always worked in my favor. Virtanen had it coming, though what I had on them paled in comparison to what the Birdman was able to release.

There had only been one other time that I wasn’t able to be a straight shooter, and that was around the time I was born as a sensate. It took me a lot of sacrifice to get my cred back up to fighting trim after that, but it was worth it. I was back on top, and clients had been coming to me for a few months now. Truth be told, I had been thinking about figuring out how to make the whole process go above-board, but that was put on hold when we met Dresden and saw the thing here in Seoul.

“Ms. Marks?” Kincaid said. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay, who was it? Kougami? Haltmann?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Kincaid said. “You should be focusing on the immediate situation.”

“I am,” I said. Will had gone to try to wake Lito, but I felt his courage and resolve welling up within me. It’s really a unique feeling, to know that when you are in your worst moments, people will have your back. “You tagged me, I want to make a deal. I need to know who it is.”

“My client doesn’t take deals offered by those he has at the tip of his spear,” Kincaid said. “He offers them, if and when they are warranted. And I’m not entirely sure that it’s warranted here.”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t have a warrant, either,” I said, trying to hide the smirk. “So cut the crap.”

“I will when you do,” he replied. “Would you like to speak with your wife?”

Shit. I had forgotten that he had Amanita. “Please,” I said, still calm, but I knew the others could feel my fear. There was some rustling on the line, and then, that warm, wonderful voice. 

“Nomi!” she said, and I could feel the relief in her voice. Didn’t need to be a sensate. Just need to be a married couple. “I’m okay. He’s treating me well. I haven’t read the next Nancy Drew book without you.” That was our code, to ensure that we were telling each other the truth. When you’re in the intelligence business, you need to adopt counter-intelligence techniques. “He said Bug is going to be okay.”

“What happened to Bug?”

Kincaid’s voice answered me. “Your friend is a little bit off his balance,” he said, with some wry amusement. “Tried coming at me with a hockey stick. I think he was yelling in Spanish. Didn’t catch all of it. He’s fine, just going to have a bad headache when he wakes up.” That certainly sounded like Bug. Overconfidence with a side of hubris. “Back to our issue, though.”

“Right,” I said, relieved. “I still don’t get why—”

“It’s not who you stole from,” Kincaid said, “so much as what you were looking for. And as much as I like to keep things at arm’s length, you started poking around looking for something on someone I consider a friend. So, like you said, cut the crap, and tell me why you want to know about Harry Dresden.”

—

-Among The Lacuna-

Where am I?

Who are you?

I am not you.

You are not me yet.

Not yet.

Not anymore.

I am no longer you.

You are here, you are now.

I am now?

And here. But not now.

But you... are here with me.

We are and we are not.

Are you here with us?

Are you in this time with us?

Do you understand?

I do not understand yet.

You do not understand now. But you did. And you will.

Are my cluster safe?

They are your cluster. They are here now.

[The soft touch of a gentle but strong hand.]

They are not here yet.

You are not here yet.

We are here. We are now.

We are.

I am.

You understand.

We understand. But not yet.

[The sound of chatter, like at a dinner table with family.]

Memory.

All we are.

All that is, we remember.

All that has not happened, we have known.

Memory is here but not now.

Now is memory, but not here.

Remember.

Do you understand?

I don’t know.

Memory. Time. Self. Place. Cluster.

They are here. They are no longer here.

They are no longer now. They will be.

Now is not now.

We have forgotten.

Can you help?

—

-Seoul, South Korea-

“Dresden?” Will said. “How does he know Dresden?”

“Better question,” Wolfgang added, “does he know we know Dresden?”

I shook my head. “Guys. He has Amanita and Bug. I’m going to play this cool, but I can’t let them get hurt.”

“Should have taken them with us,” Lito grumbled. “Too late now. It’d take six hours to drive there.”

“Ms. Marks?” Kincaid said. “I’m waiting for an answer.”

“A friend of mine ran into Mr. Dresden a few days ago,” I said. When all else fails, go with the truth. “I went looking for information, found a firewall I couldn’t beat, then got bored. End of story.”

“It’s never the end of the story when Dresden’s involved,” Kincaid growled. “I believe you. But at the same time, I don’t think my client will. Whether you know it or not, Ms. Marks, you have stumbled into something for which you are completely unprepared.”

“I do six impossible things before breakfast,” I said. Again, still the truth. “Try me.”

“Don’t, Ms. Marks, mistake my word of friendly warning for a challenge to continue pursuing information on Dresden. It will not end well for you. It will end particularly poorly for Ms., uh...”

“Caplan-Marks!” Amanita shouted. I could barely hear her yell an additional “Jackass!”

“For Ms. Jackass,” Kincaid said, and I heard his smirk. “Your strange friend, he’s cool.”

“Glad to know,” I said. “Next time you want to threaten me, have the decency to do it to my face.”

“I highly doubt we’ll meet again, Ms. Marks,” Kincaid said, “but do keep one eye open. My client is probably going to want to have a word with you after all. They’ll be in touch. I suggest that you do not call Ms. Caplan-Marks for an hour, starting now.” He paused. “You have an eclectic taste in decor.”

“Is that another threat?”

“No, no,” Kincaid said. “An honest observation. You don’t see Kenyan artwork very often in California hackers’ homes. Ms. Caplan-Marks is skilled.”

“She didn’t paint it,” I said, before I could catch myself. “I did.”

“I doubt that. I’m looking at the signature now... Onyango? I don’t know that one.”

-Nairobi, Kenya-

Capheus sat up and looked me in the eye. “The painting,” he mumbled. “Damn.”

“You’re not compromised yet,” I said. “Stay calm.”

“It’s not a good habit to lie, Ms. Marks,” Kincaid said. “It puts you on a road that only ends at Hell’s door.” The line went dead, and a text came from the same number. “ONE HOUR”

-Seoul, South Korea-

Will had called a cab and got our bags loaded while I spoke with Kincaid, and we settled into the minivan shortly after I hung up. I was still pretty rattled, but the fact that Kincaid had said to wait an hour probably wasn’t meant to ratchet up the tension. More likely he just wanted a head start. So, I made sure that I wouldn’t call Amanita within the hour.

-Rosemead, California, United States-

Lito drummed his fingers on the table while the phone dialed out. Beside him, Hernando and Daniela were huddled close together, presumably woken up when Lito panicked. The rest of us just stood there, waiting, hoping against hope that the worst hadn’t come to pass. “Hello?”

“Lito! Oh my God, I am so glad to hear your voice,” Amanita said— before he could say anything. “I just had the weirdest visit....”

“Is he still there?” I asked, and Lito relayed it.

“No, he left a few minutes ago. Dude was ripped. If I intended to try them...” She paused. “Nevermind. Anyway, are you okay?”

“We should be asking you that,” Will said. “How’s Bug?”

“Out cold... God, do you think he has a concussion or something?” Amanita’s voice was starting to wobble in that way it does when she’s about to cry. Any other time, I would be even more in love. Not now. “He got hit pretty hard.”

“Check his breathing and his pulse,” Kala said. “Then get him to a doctor as soon as you can.”

“The clinic on Market,” I said. “Use my insurance card.”

-Seoul, South Korea-

Wolfgang settled into the taxi in the row behind us and leaned forward. “We have a problem,” he said. “Dresden is in Korea.”

“He what?” Lito said. “How? Why is he following us?”

“He claims it’s because of faeries being murdered here.” He pulled at his t-shirt, which was still clinging to him from the shower. “Don’t know if I believe him.”

“Mab,” Lito said, and almost immediately we all told him to shut up. A blast of cold air from the window put tingles all over my face before Will could roll it back up; he’d accidentally hit the controls with his elbow. Apparently Korean cars, even the minivans, aren’t particularly roomy for Chicago-sized cops. “He works for M— her,” Lito added. “It would be a good cover.”

“Nomi,” Amanita said. “I managed to get a picture of something I saw on Kincaid’s belt. Look familiar?” My own phone dinged with a notification; before I could respond, she continued, “Runes. Like on that server.”

“Who was that again?” I asked, and I heard Amanita roll her chair over to the desks. “Wait. I think I remember, now. Nordic? Moon... -ic something?”

“Monoc Security,” Will said. “Whoa. That’s one of the biggest private security firms in the world. They opened up a branch in Chicago just a couple years ago.”

“Are they trustworthy?” Capheus asked.

“Hard to say,” Will said. “For rent-a-cops they’re usually on the level, but they’re also usually on the payroll of John Marcone. The gang boss.”

“Shit,” I hissed. I have no problem breaking into computer systems owned by the government, or by big companies with lots to hide. Organized crime is something completely different. They hire goons at freaking Costco, and these guys don’t make deals. More than once, more than a lifetime ago, I learned this the hard way. My left wrist still makes funny cracking noises every once in a while. Ever since then, if I find that I’m in a criminal’s network, the first thing I do is get the hell out. The second thing I do is call the real cops. And the third thing I do is make sure my bail-out bag is ready.

“Amanita, go call your dads and see if you can hang out there for a couple of days,” Will said. “We’ll try to get you and Bug tickets out here as soon as we can. Get Bug to the clinic and tell him to heal fast.”

“And Dresden?” Wolfgang asked.

“We still don’t know his real connection to Monoc, Marcone, or Joong-ki,” I said. “Not much to go on. Let him be for now. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he won’t cross our path again.”

“I doubt that,” Sun said, “but I also think that he is not our priority. You are coming into the city now?”

“Yeah, crossing the river now,” Will said. “Where should we meet you?”

“I have sent someone from the Bak offices to meet you near the University of Seoul,” she said. “A new hire. Her name is Ms. Choi.”

“Is she...?”

“Not a sensate,” Sun said. “Or if she is, she was on blockers. Either way, it would be best to keep knowledge of ourselves to ourselves. I know that I am not willing to go into an intercompany meeting without blockers. Perhaps she is the same way.”

“Yeah,” Will said. In a way, I kinda felt bad for Sun, Capheus, and Lito. They have positions in the world— in their worlds— that, if they were discovered to be sensates, they could lose. Being a sensate is great when you don’t want to keep secrets. But the fact of the matter is, our world of information is built entirely around the concept of secrecy. Of having one group that knows, and one group that doesn’t. There’s good money to be made in selling secrets from one side to the other. I should know.

The real irony of it is that BPO— Ruth el-Sadaawi’s BPO— was meant to make sure that there was a gentle barrier between the world of the sensorium and the world of the sapien. The waking world would know that we exist, and would know that we were no less trustworthy than when they did not know we were sensates. When the fact that we share ourselves so deeply that it cannot be taken from us except by death was something that they did not know. It’s kind of like hiring someone, they end up being employee of the month ten years running, and then you find out they were in jail for a couple months. Yeah, it’s not a proud moment, and it could be seen as a liability to you.... but they’ve more than proven their good faith. 

Yeah, we’re sensates. You might have some embarrassing moments discovered. But hey. We saved the world, once. I think that’s worth a couple gold stars at the very least.

—

-Among The Lacuna-

We have forgotten.

Can you help?


	9. A Grey Cloak Waiting

I woke up with a headache roughly the size of Neptune, my mouth feeling like the inside of an Egyptian tomb in July, and the vague feeling that, despite how I felt right now, the previous night had been very pleasing. Or at the very least, very lubricated. I don’t drink often, and certainly not to excess. It would not really be a good habit to get into even if I were just an “ordinary” wizard, but being the mortal consort of a literal force of nature makes the risk of going on a binge much more than just having to walk home sans underwear. Which reminds me... yep, still there. Small favors, am I right?

I sat up slowly, getting my bearings moment by moment. I recognized the hostel where I was staying, so I felt reasonably certain that I wasn’t in too much disarray. I mean, no more than usual. The little four-cup coffee maker was sitting on the desk across from my bed, and it looked like it was ready simply to be turned on. Had I had the foresight to ready coffee last night? I’m not that kind of wizard, really. The odds were against it, but evidently it had happened. Not wanting to let that portion of good fortune go to waste, I flipped the switch and the spell of Summon Java began flowing.

My belongings appeared to be more or less arranged as if I had come home, set up the coffee maker, and then crashed into bed. Which is to say that nothing looked like it was obviously missing. I checked for the small leather notebook containing Jae-K’s notes— still there. My wallet, my backpack of gear, and my revolver were all similarly safe. Not for the first time did I think that maybe I should start carrying it with me on a constant basis during this trip. During the Warden briefings on Southeast Asia, I had kind of nodded off during the parts about firearm laws. Which in retrospect was still okay because that was ten years ago and I had no intention of ever having to carry a piece outside of Illinois, let alone outside of the US. 

Then Chichen Itza happened. And then Mab happened.

So far I hadn’t come to any real harm, despite being apparently hung over, so I put the gun back into its lock case and shoved it under my bed. “May I never need it,” I murmured. Besides, I’m a freakin’ wizard. Somebody starts with me, they’re going to be very unhappy with the results, firearm or no firearm.

My breath caught in my throat at the thought. I’m a wizard, yes, and I’m the Winter Knight. But I am also a Warden of the White Council. And that meant I needed to find a way to keep the impulses of the Winter Mantle in check. Impulses like torching a city block because I couldn’t understand someone’s mumbled apology when they bumped into me. The Winter Mantle unlocked a lot of things that normal people keep limiters on, and that list did not exclude the impulses that make its bearer capable of living in a society that had progressed out of the early Dark Ages. In short, I was a ticking time bomb. Sooner or later, I’d lose control, like Lloyd Slate had. Sooner or later, I’d go feral. And unlike Lloyd Slate, there was no other me around to put me down when— not if— that day came. My days were numbered, just like the chambers in my revol--

The gun was back in my hand.

It took me fifteen seconds of staring at it to recover enough to put it away again.

—

After coffee and a shower, I went out and found that it was around lunchtime. Which was convenient, because I felt extremely hungry. It’s funny how little coincidences like that pile up in my life. I found a place in my own notes that had been recommended to me— likely by Ji-a— and sat down to a very large bowl of some kind of rice soup. I don’t exactly know how to say it, other than “yummy”. While I ate, I looked over the new pages in my journal. 

Ji-a Choi, according to my notes, had been exceptionally helpful. She had translated a few pages of Jae-K’s book, mostly on topics like a mass migration of juji, or bird faeries, away from Seoul in the past month. He had tried contacting a few dokkaebi, or goblin-like fae, to see what was up, but all that they had been able to confirm was that the juji were fleeing from something they thought was coming. When the topic came to discovering where to find a haetae, though, she advised me that I wasn’t going to have much luck. There had been few of them located in Korea for a long time, and even fewer still in Seoul. 

I didn’t get to be Harry freaking Dresden by giving up easily, though, and I sure as heck wasn’t about to stop being Harry now. Still, I had no greater leads on that then I had had the night before. And, apparently, I had been so distracted by the pretty girl helping me, that I had failed to actually conduct the ritual I had been planning to contact a haetae in the first place. On the bright side, I thought, at least she didn’t rob me or get me drunk.

But the loss of memory still puzzled me— and scared me. Mucking around in anyone’s memory is tapdancing back and forth just inches from the line drawn by the Laws of Magic, and one wrong step puts you on the wrong side of that line. If I hadn’t been drunk, and I hadn’t been concussed, what else could have caused the gap in my memory but someone messing with magic? To the best of my knowledge, not much else interesting had happened to my head in the last few—

Gorski. The cluster. Sensates. It was entirely possible that having been whammied by eight soulgazes at once was having some residual effect on my brain. The problem was twofold: one, I had no proof that there was any part of them lingering beyond what was burned into my memory by the Sight; and two, I might have to rely on that connection, especially knowing that at least Wolfgang and Sun were here. Come to think of it, there was a third problem. If I did figure out that it was something that got stuck in my skull, I was pretty sure that I didn’t have the expertise to go in and get it out. The experience with birthing Bonnie had been proof enough of that.

I don’t want to talk about it. Seriously. Moving on.

A cough from the table behind me caught my attention. Well, it was less a cough and more of a gasping, hacking almost-vomit. I tried to tune it out, but then the screaming started from the other patrons, and I finally turned to see my retainer, Cat Sith, licking his front paws after having hocked up a hairball in a soup bowl. If he was concerned at all about sitting in a plate of rice, he did not show it. “Our Queen is interested to know how the investigation fares,” he said.

I blinked. This was extremely unprecedented, even for Sith’s brand of defiant compliance. He never showed himself in front of vanilla mortals, let alone speaking. There was a brief staredown between us, as the rest of the restaurant emptied itself out in short order. “What,” I said, completely inflectionless, “in the name of all that is good and nice in this world, possessed you to do that?”

“You asked me to.” More silence for a moment. He burped.

“Wha—”

“Your exact words were,” he continued, as if I hadn’t started speaking— which was accurate because like he could give a damn if I was speaking— “and I quote, ‘The next time I see you, it had better be on a plate in a cheap Korean restaurant’. Here you are, and here I am. I await your report.”

Jesus. I knew the faeries were literal-minded, but this was just asking for trouble. I was pretty sure that he had been asked for an update a couple days ago, but he was just waiting for this opportunity to make me eat my words. If he could have found a way to make that phrase literal, too, he probably would have. Still, as smug as the little scuzzball was, he did have a right to ask me for an update. Well. If he can cause me trouble, I can do it right back.

“Unless you can read Korean, I don’t think we’re going to have anything to report to Mab,” I said. “So piss off.”

“Did you not bother to learn the language before coming here?” he said, in a tone that I thought I heard coming from the television at the Alphas’ place a couple years back. “Really, wizard. She expected so much from you. Ah well. I can go and report your failure now, if you’d—”

“Wait,” I said. “You can speak Korean?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But I can help you find an ally who does.” This, too, was unprecedented. Sith never offered help. Hell, faeries only did it when they had something to gain from it— usually more than it would cost them to not help, and more than they told you up front what the cost was. I knew instinctively that I could not trust anything that Cat Sith was offering, let alone anything that I managed to get out of him through verbal judo. “You were looking for a haetae, I see? An excellent choice, though your association with the holy beast will hamper your search.”

“Holy beast? You mean Mouse?”

“The same,” Cat Sith said, preening. “I can set up the introduction, if you would like, though I think you would be better served by an ungnyeo. They are natural allies of Winter, you see, and...” He trailed off, before looking for a moment to be completely startled. Something had spooked him. “I await your report.”

“And what?”

“Nothing,” Cat Sith said. “I simply realized that to bore you with facts you must undoubtedly already know would delay our execution by a needlessly long period, and so I chose to, as you often put it, ‘cram it’.”

“Imagine for the moment that I am extremely stupid,” I said. Before he could speak, I held up a hand. “I know you’re going to say ‘that’s easy’, but just listen. What is an ugly neo?”

“An ungnyeo,” Cat Sith said, “is a bear woman. Similar in theory to the People of the Forest in the Americas, but far more spiritual in nature. Several are in this city, in fact, but they have hidden their nature to a great degree. I do not think it would be difficult to set up the meeting with the Winter Knight, but if they found a grey cloak waiting to meet them, they might not want to speak.”

I’d had good relations with the People of the Forest back home, to the point where Bigfoot himself kept me on speed-dial. (Yes, Bigfoot has a cell phone. Don’t ask me how.) But in my experience with them, they had never shown the slightest hesitation to seek the White Council’s help. Ji-a had also been eager to meet with me, in Jae-K’s absence. “Why not?”

“I do not know, Sir Harry,” Cat Sith said. “They have never approached a wizard of the Council before. But I will find out why.”

“Fine,” I said. “Try to keep Mab happy in the meantime. Tell her I’m still getting caught up with local law enforcement, trying to gather information. And try to set up that meeting. If not with a haetae, then with the ungneyo.”

“Ungnyeo,” Sith said.

“That’s what I said, ungneyo.”

“There is no ‘ne’ sound,” he shot back, rolling his eyes. “It is a ‘nyeo’.”

“Now you’re just meowing at me,” I said. “Get going. And next time...”

I could practically see his eyes light up with the chance to screw me over again. “Yes, Sir Harry?”

“Next time we meet, it’s going to be at my hostel room, in the mid afternoon, and you’re going to bring me a fresh, perfectly done hot dog from the Blue Line deli near United Center,” I said, grinning. In truth, I didn’t want the hot dog. I just wanted him to schlep all the way across the world to be as inconvenienced as he had made me. “Go. Come back when you have the meeting set up.”

—

Exploring the city took up most of the afternoon, and I had found a few places where I might be able to set up a meeting with the ughno. Ungoyo. The bear thing Cat Sith had mentioned. When I got back to the hostel, the lady at the desk handed me a piece of paper. “You have a message, Mr. Dresden.” The paper had a Korean phone number on it, which I knew because under it was written in shaky English the phrase KOREAN PHONE NO. “That was all that was left for you,” she added. “I think you are expected to call them back.”

“Do you know who it was?” I asked.

“No, she did not leave a name,” the desk keeper said, bowing slightly. “She sounded very young, though. Like a child.”

A child, I thought. A young girl. Who would have known I was in Seoul even though I hadn’t told anyone, and had only written in my journal. There was only one person who that could be.

“Hello?” the young girl said, on the other end of the phone line. I had called from my room after getting settled in and setting up more coffee. 

“Ivy,” I said, smiling. “You have a funny sense of timing.” Ivy was the nickname I’d given to a girl known otherwise as The Archive, who was quite literally a living encyclopedia. On everything. If it was written down, Ivy knew it instantaneously. Normally this is a big responsibility, as having that much knowledge can cause someone to go remarkably insane. Ivy had it because her mother— the previous Archive— had done exactly that, committing suicide and dooming the girl to her fate at the tender age of seven. So far, she had been spared the worst part of her mother’s psychoses, but she was also still very young— I think not even really a teenager yet— and so things could go very wrong for her.

Fortunately, there had been some foresight. Someone looking out for her had hired a bodyguard for Ivy, and they had picked a real piece of work when they did, too. Jared Kincaid was also known as the Hellhound, a mercenary of something of a bad reputation. His reputation wasn’t bad because he betrayed his clients, or anything. It was bad because anything that came across as a hint of a threat to his clients’ safety would be destroyed without so much as a warning. Nobody who got in his crosshairs would ever know that he was angry at them, let alone being targeted by him. They’d just be dead.

“How are you liking Korea, Mr. Dresden?” Ivy asked.

“Good food,” I said, shrugging. “I’d probably like it better if this were an actual vacation.”

“I understand,” she said, emotionlessly. I tried to tell myself that the lack of humanity in her voice was just part of her still-developing defense mechanism against the hurricane of information bombarding her on a moment-to-moment basis. Didn’t help. I never much liked hearing people sound completely dead inside. “Mr. Kincaid says some people were looking for information on you.”

“Really?” I said. “Wow. I guess I should be honored. Who?”

“He won’t tell me,” Ivy said. “He simply asked me to pass along that you were being watched, and that you should keep your knowledge of it as quiet as possible.”

“Is he around?” I asked. “I’d feel better hearing that from him.”

“He is visiting a client right now. I’m in the car.”

“Thank you, Ivy,” I said. “Hey, one more thing. You can read Korean, right?”

“Are you referring to Warden Kim’s notes?” she said. “I can, but like you, I don’t think I could decipher the magical text.” How did she— “Because you wrote it down,” she said. “I will see what I can get to you in Seoul, but I cannot make many promises.”

“Thanks again, kid,” I said. “Hey, if you’re ever in Chicago sometime, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. She’s gonna love you.”

“I look forward to meeting your daughters, Mr. Dresden,” Ivy said, and this time I could hear her smile.


End file.
